


Exodia: Defenders of the Universe

by Blue Eyes Black Dragon (OperaGoose)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender, Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Voltron, Big Bang Challenge, Disabling Injuries, Fantasy Violence, Gen, IN SPACE!, Mecha, Referenced Genocide, Robot Dragons, art included, slight Jou/Kaiba if you squint with shipping goggles on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 12:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15557859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OperaGoose/pseuds/Blue%20Eyes%20Black%20Dragon
Summary: Jou just wanted to become a space pilot and reach the edges of their own solar system. He didn’t mean to bond with a sentient robot dragon and get stuck in the middle of an intergalactic space war with three of his friends and his mullet-headed rival. But he’s seen the horror the Galra Emperor has caused, and there’s no way he can just let it go on without doing his part to stop it.The YGO-Voltron AU nobody asked for.





	1. The Rise of Exodia

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to the organisers and participants of the YGO Big Bang this year! Plus all the writers and artists involved.  
> Personal thanks to my two amazing artists, zombiebass and dog_fish!  
> Also huge gratitude to my betas LilyLiegh and whathecheese who helped clear up some of my messes!

Akhnamkanon stood at the helm of his ship, watching the scanners as armies and ships amassed for the frontal attack. His son, Atem, too young to face these kinds of horrors, stood by the controls ready to do his duty for their people. 

He turned as he heard familiar footsteps behind him. “Timæus. Have you any good news?” 

He only received a grim expression in reply. “The enemy forces have captured the Millennia dragon.” 

He closed his eyes. “Then there is naught for it. We cannot let Exodia fall into enemy hands.” He gave himself a mere moment to compose himself, then opened his eyes. “You know what must be done.” 

The knight’s one remaining eye closed, and he bowed. “Your majesty.” 

~+~ 

“Sir, I’m begging you!” Jou said, standing between the instructor and the coffee dispenser. “Just let me do the practical! I can _prove_ to you I’m ready to go into pilot training!” 

“I’ve told you countless times – if you don’t pass the written exam, then you can’t progress to the practical exam. You’re too much of a liability.” 

“Dad, please…” 

“You’ve been told repeatedly to call me ‘Commodore’ or ‘sir’ while we are on campus.” A familiar gaze, the same dark brown as his own, hardened on him. “Do you think I want the embarrassment of my own son failing out of pilot training? We’re not having this discussion again. We’ll discuss your options another day.” 

Coffee in hand, Commodore Jounouchi took his leave. He stared after him, clenching his fists, but staying silent. He did his best to be understanding. He knew what his father’s priorities were - the safety of the Garrison and its training academy, the family reputation, Jou’s own mental wellbeing. Tried to see it from his point of view, about the rules being in place to avoid danger down the line. About the stress Jou would go through in pilot training if he already struggled with the academic component. But it was _hard_ , and it pissed him off. 

He frowned when he spotted a familiar asshole standing on the other side of the hallway. 

“What are you staring at, Moneybags?” He snapped irritably. 

Kaiba merely sneered in his direction, and Jou stalked away. It wasn’t **fair**. He’d clocked more hours in the flying simulator than anyone else – and he was ranked second in the international battle simulation averages out of **all** the first years. Only that jerk Kaiba and his stupid fringed mullet beat Jou out there. 

But the theory? Jou couldn’t get it to stick in his head. What did it matter anyway? When he was a fighter, out there for real, he wouldn’t _need_ the theory. He’d have his navigator, and they’d do all the calculations. Just point him at the right direction and he’d get there, and get rid of any Coalition ships in the way. 

But no. The stupid Garrison and the stupid academic structure meant he couldn’t go on to the pilot’s program until he passed the written exam. But what did that even mean for him now? There was no way he had _the smarts_ for the navigator’s program, or the mechanical know-how for engineering and repairs. His father would never face the shame of having his son in the maintenance crew. 

He trudged back to his dorm room, where his roommate Yugi was fiddling with a Rubix Cube. He lay down on the bed, watching his friend for a few minutes. 

Once all the colours were neat in their order, Yugi put down the cube and turned to him. “No luck with the Commodore, huh?” 

“He won’t even listen to me,” Jou mumbled, turning over on his side to face him. 

“Maybe we should do something fun tonight,” his roommate suggested, grinning. 

“Your fun or my fun?” He asked suspiciously. 

Yugi’s grin only widened. 

~+~ 

Jou’s mouth hung open, eyes unmoving from the sky. The Garrison was far out in the desert, and the stars were brilliant in the sky. He’d lived in cities all his life, and even then he’d been enchanted with every star he could see in the light-choked night sky. But out here… here he could see every constellation, the space dust, the orange of the city in the distance fading up through indigo and the deepest black imaginable. It was magic: the wonder of the infinite universe. Every star with a solar system around it, the alien life that was bound to exist – even if it was only tiny microscopic amoeba still developing life. He wanted to be _out there_ , helping discover this new frontier. 

The Garrison was still trying to explore their own solar system. The new war that was going on against the European Coalition was for territory on Mars, but the Garrison was a ‘peaceful’ organization – their fighter pilots were for protection. They were trying to develop safe flight paths – to Titan and Pluto – and other opportunities for extraterrestrial colonization. 

And the Coalition fought them at every step, trying to prevent them from gaining ground. Their resources were spread too thin with the war; they couldn’t beat them to _terra nullius_ \- the prized legal technicality that was really just a fancy way of calling first dibs. But they could shoot at any Garrison ships, discouraging them from going beyond the inner belt. 

Jou was determined. He was going to be the first Garrison pilot to fly beyond Ceres. Other countries had managed to reach the dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, but nobody had gone beyond it yet. Nobody had gone into the outer rim. It would be great; he’d be a beloved hero. They’d let him go further – maybe by the end of his career he’d have reached Pluto, or stepped foot on the edges of their solar system. The furthest humans had ever gone before. 

“Joey!” Yugi called eagerly. “The meteor shower is starting!” 

Reluctantly, he moved himself away from his view of the stars, over to where the group of students were gathered. Rebecca Hawkins, their best software developer-slash-engineer had rigged up a ~~stolen~~ borrowed telescope to a screen, so they could all see through it. 

Jou didn’t look at the screen. He put his eyes to the sky, where they always wanted to go. Trailing across the midnight sky – okay, 10:45 sky – were streams of light. He followed them with quick darts of his eyes, listening to the excited murmuring of the students. His breath caught slightly as something broke free – falling out of the perfect arcs and dropping towards the desert. There was a small explosion of dust upwards, and he felt his eyes widen. “Did anybody else _see_ that?” 

“Shut up, Wheeler,” one of the guys gathered around the screen hissed. “This is a rare astronomical event! Of _course_ we saw it!” 

“That’s not what I—” He was cut off by a harsh chorus of shushing. 

Well, they could go hang themselves. He held his hand over his eyes, squinting out to see where the dust cloud started, and then turned his back. 

Four people were looking at him. Rebecca, who was silently gathering up her bag of tech stuff; his friend Yugi, whose eyes were wide enough in shock Jou knew he’d seen it too; Anzu, Yugi’s best friend who only looked concerned; and… _ugh,_ Seto Kaiba, Mr Better-Than-Everyone. 

Jou shrugged his denim jacket on and walked past them all. He was going to go look, screw the crowd. He didn’t expect there to be people following him, but what did he know? The same crowd who hadn’t straight up ignored him was now tailing after him. Ugh, even Moneybags. 

“So… is no one going to talk about where we’re going?” Anzu asked, after they got back down to the ground floor. 

“Gonna go look at the crash,” Jou said, heading to the staff parking garage. 

“And we’re going to the carpark because…?” She prompted. 

“Well, I’m not planning on _walking_ into the desert.” 

Rebecca pushed up her glasses. “The access security to the parking garage needs a Staff ID code and their personal PIN.” She opened the security panel. “It should be simple to hack, I only need a few mo…” 

While she spoke, Jou reached forward and punched a familiar series of numbers into the pin-pad. 

“…or…that works,” she commented. 

“Joey, how do you know the staff codes?” Anzu asked, horrified. 

“It pays to be a teenage delinquent,” he said evasively, taking the keys that ejected out of the security box and heading over to the range rover they matched. 

“This is _the Commodore_ ’s car, Joey!” Yugi gasped, horrified. 

“The Commodore is in meetings with the Governor General tonight,” Kaiba said. _Ugh,_ Kaiba. “It’s a smart choice.” 

Jou climbed in behind the wheel, starting the car and waited for the others to get in. Yugi Rebecca, and Anzu all crammed into the backseat. 

Wait, no – that left _Kaiba_ climbing into the passenger seat. Damnit. 

“You better not critique my driving, Moneybags,” Jou hissed, as he carefully navigated out of the parking garage. 

Kaiba just glared at him and reached to hold on to the safety strap on the ceiling. Asshole! 

“Buckle up, guys. We’re going on the adventure of our lives!” 

~+~ 

The crash-site was oddly quiet. No space nuts running around trying to find something before the government – or, more likely, the Garrison – came to take everything away. Jou couldn’t believe nobody else had seen it. Had all the space-nuts had their eyes glued to a telescope? …well, maybe. 

“There’s nothing here,” Rebecca complained. “Just a lot of dust.” 

“Something had to have crashed,” Jou argued. “I saw it fall. And the dust cloud.” He tightened his belt. “I’m going down into the cave.” 

“You have to be _kidding_ , Joey!” Yugi said. “It’s the middle of the night. You can’t go _spelunking.”_

He took his phone out and turned on the flashlight on his phone, pointing it down into the hole until he saw the rocky ground not too far down. He nodded in satisfaction. Jou tucked the flashlight into his jeans pocket, so the light peaked out. “Not asking you to come with me. I wanna find the space rock.” 

“You’re a reckless idiot,” Kaiba muttered. 

“And you’re a coward,” he sneered back, before sitting on the edge of the rocky crevice and sliding himself in. He bent his knees, bracing for the impact. It was a jarring landing, but no injuries. A few feet away, there was a gnarled and twisted metal plate. “Lame.” It was even stamped with the Garrison logo. 

A rope coiled down, and the others shimmied down into the cave after him, carrying flashlights. “Did you find it?” Yugi asked. 

“It’s a panel from a Garrison drone-scanner,” Jou said. “We might as well…” The word ‘leave’ died on his lips as he turned to face them. His flashlight had danced across the wall, lighting up some wall-carvings. They didn’t look native; the shapes were too geometric, too square. They were reptilian… no, they were _dragons_. Dragon faces and bodies. 

  
[Artwork by dog_fish](http://dog-fish.tumblr.com/post/176622232450/comic-for-the-wonderful-etiolxte-for-their-big)  


“…cool.” He approached the wall and pressed his finger against one of the carved lines. It was cut _deep_ into the rock. Scarily deep, like not even modern chisels and saws could get that deep without damaging the structure of the rock. 

Jou gasped out loud as he felt _something_ from the rock. Like static electricity, but more. “Ouch!” he said, even though it didn’t hurt. 

There was no such thing as black light. What they _called_ black light was ultraviolet. ‘Black light’ was impossible under their current knowledge of physics. Like, the human eye couldn’t actually _see_ it, if it was possible it existed. 

But the light that began to leak out of the lines of the carving _was_ somehow black light. His brain almost couldn’t understand what the hell it was seeing. 

Darker than vantablack, it wasn’t itself bright. But it seemed to make the room around it lighter somehow. Honestly Jou probably would’ve thought it was just shadows, except for the way it seemed to almost glow around the edges of the mark. No, that wasn’t it. That didn’t make any sense either. 

He squinted his eyes, trying to force them to see what he was looking at. Around the edges of the black void was just faintly glowing a deep red. 

His brain hurt. He was just going to call it ‘black light’ and get on with his life. 

“That’s not possible.” Damnit, Kaiba! Did he really have to state the obvious like that? 

The entire cave was lighting up with the impossible, brain-numbing black light. Carvings everywhere, all of the same, black dragon. 

Jou split from the group to follow the carvings as they lit up. 

“Joey!” Yugi said, hurrying after him. “Don’t just walk off.” 

“I wanna see where they’re all leading,” he said, ignoring them as the whole crowd of footsteps followed after him. But they didn’t get far. As they stepped into a larger cavern, Jou heard an irritated groan behind him. 

“Great, you’ve led us to a dead end.” 

Before he could answer, there was a cracking sound. 

“Uh-oh.” 

The rock beneath their feet gave out, and they fell into the deep dark screaming all the way down. 

~+~ 

“Is everyone okay?” Nursing an arm throbbing with pain, Jou got to his feet. He could hear someone coughing, though he wasn’t exactly sure who. The dust and debris had settled at long last, and he fumbled out his phone with a hiss to turn the torch on. 

“Y-yeah,” Rebecca answered shakily. She was scraped up and bruised, but not bleeding. She was helping Yugi to his feet, who looked shaken but similarly uninjured - except for the cough as he tried to clear his lungs. 

Anzu was steadying herself against the wall. “I sprained my wrist, but I’m fine,” she said. 

It was a moment longer before his beam of light found Kaiba. The guy was gingerly touching a large egg on his forehead and _glaring_ as Jou turned the light on him. “Get that thing out of my face, Wheeler,” he growled. 

He turned away and used it to look around the place they’d fallen into. The walls were surprisingly close, more like a broad hallway than a cavern or tunnel. The walls were dusty, but he could make out carvings underneath. When he brushed some dust away, the carved, incomprehensible glyphs under his hand lit up in the same black light he’d seen in the cavern above. The glow slowly spread across all glyphs carved into the walls, until the whole corridor was lit in the strange colourless light. 

He turned his phone torch off, as best as he could with the cracked screen anyway, and shoved it back into his pocket. All of his friends looked washed out and grey in the strange light, their shadows too deep. To his left, the corridor had collapsed and was filled with rocks and debris. 

“Guess we go this way, then…” 

They all walked together down the hallway in a clump, leaning on one another for support. 

“How far down do you think we are?” Yugi asked. 

“It can’t be much more than twenty feet,” Jou answered. “We’re not too banged up.” 

They rounded a corner and came to a complete stop. There was a long, tense silence between them, and then Jou let out a soft, “Wow…” 

Sitting on a raised dais was a huge dragon made of black metal. It was surrounded by some sort of panelled forcefield in a sphere around it of the same impossible, black light. 

“What _is_ that?” Anzu asked, her voice soft and awed. 

“It’s some kind of robot,” Kaiba said, wandering up to the stairs of the dais. He reached out and pushed his hands against the forcefield, but there was no give. "I wonder how we get through it.” 

“ _Manners_ , Kaiba,” Jou said, nudging him aside. He raised his fist and rapped his knuckles on the shield. “Knock-knock. May we come in?” He stumbled back when the dragon inside began to unfurl, eyes glowing bright red. The shield started to disappear, hexagon by hexagon. The dragon opened its mouth and leaned down, giving a terrible roar. 

_Something_ sparked to life in Jou’s mind. It took a moment longer to realize it was images: the black dragon erupting out of molten rocks and magma; a dragon, the same but in white metal with glowing blue eyes, giving a roar atop a mountain as lightning tore apart the sky behind it. Next came a dark purple dragon covered in jewel-red round…things from which burst out a laser show of red and white lights. There was a teal-coloured dragon with green eyes that exploded from a tangle of vines, and an orange-yellow dragon atop a rocky outcrop as wild wind tangled in the background. The final image was like something out of a mecha anime from his childhood, the five dragons combining to make a large armoured figure, almost human-looking, brandishing two swords of glowing light. 

Jou took a deep, shaky breath, stumbling forward a few steps. “Did… did everyone else just see that?” 

“A huge big robot! And _dragons_!” Yugi’s voice was flushed with excitement. 

The black dragon gave a low, quiet rumble and its body crouched down, bringing its head closer to them all, red eyes staring deep into theirs. 

“Joey… is that thing staring at you?” Yugi asked, creeping up to Jou’s shoulder. 

“Huh?” He swayed from side to side, and it still seemed to be watching him. “No, it’s watching all of us, right…?” He said, now uncertain. 

“No,” Rebecca said, pushing up her glasses. “It looks like it’s just watching you.” 

“Why is it watching Wheeler?” Kaiba said, sounding sour about it. 

“Don’t be jealous, Moneybags,” Jou said. He approached the dragon, stepping up the stairs and onto the dais. “Am I supposed to help you or something, gorgeous dragon?” 

The dragon gave a low growl and bent down to rest its huge head on the ground. Behind him, Jou heard the others yelling – in fear or warning, or something similar. But he didn’t feel afraid. The dragon opened its jaw and Jou stared as a gangway unfurled and touched the ground before his feet. He hesitated, just a moment. Then he shot his friends a grin and ran up the gangway. 

Inside was obviously the interior of a spaceship. And there, front and centre in the cockpit, was a big comfortable chair, not like the standard pilot’s chairs from the simulator. He settled into it, and it almost felt like it was built for him. It was pretty far from the control panel, but as soon as he thought that, the chair launched forward on tracks to settle him close to the board. 

“Joey, you don’t have your pilot’s license. You’re not supposed to be in a cockpit unsupervised without an instructor,” Anzu scolded. 

“This is a giant robot dragon from space,” Jou answered. “They can try and stop me.” 

After his words, he felt _something_ spark to life in his mind. Glowing panels flared to life and floated in the air above the dash, in the same impossibly black light. From the panel, two levers rose up from the floor into position instead of a control wheel. Jou placed his hands on each of the levers, and it was almost like a static shock in his brain. He could feel the whole dragon, almost like it was his own body. There was a corner of his brain that almost hadn’t been there before, an awareness…an _otherness_. Something not human, something not quite alive. 

The black dragon? 

In answer, the corner of his brain gave a sort of low purr of acknowledgement. 

So that was probably a yes then. 

“Joey, what are you _doing?”_

The sound of Anzu’s slightly panicked voice snapped him back into awareness about what was going on around him. The whole ship – the _dragon_ – was moving. Crouching low down and then launching upwards. 

“This isn’t me!” he replied, heart racing in his chest, somewhere between panic and adrenaline. “Hold on!” 

The dragon barrelled towards the roof and _kept going_ through the top of the cave until they burst out towards a star-filled sky. 

“Wheeler!” Kaiba growled. “Land this ship now!” 

“Already told you.” Leaning forward in his seat, he pressed the ship on until it left the atmosphere of Earth behind them. “It’s not me!” 

Rebecca, who was clinging to his seat on one side, pointed towards one of the floating panels. “That’s some sort of radar,” she said. “It’s picking up something _big_.” 

“Where?” Yugi asked from Jou’s other armrest. 

“Right in front of us,” Jou replied through gritted teeth. 

Outside the…window? Windshield? Whatever it was, out there was a huge, unidentified ship. 

“Is that Korean?” Jou asked, pulling the levers to adjust their flight upwards. 

“That’s not a ship from any country on _Earth,”_ Anzu answered, her voice oddly calm for the situation. 

“We don’t have technology anywhere near advanced as that,” Kaiba said. 

“Alright, Moneybags, do me a favour?” Jou replied, wrenching the dragon to the left to avoid some sort of….laser thing that was powering up on the ship. 

“What?” 

“Shut up.” His brain sparked, and he knew what to do. Wrenching the levers aside, he turned the dragon to face the enemy and squeezed down on the trigger behind his first two fingers. He could feel the laser beam bursting from the dragon’s jaw and striking the mouth of the canon as it powered up again. 

“Yeah, take _that!”_

“On your left!” Anzu shouted. 

He twisted the dragon to the side just in time to avoid another blast from a second canon. He hissed as he watched it pierce the atmosphere and strike an ocean. 

“We need to get that ship away from our planet!” Yugi cried with a fierce sort of determination. 

Jou nodded and turned the nose away from their planet, away from the sun. He pushed the levers forward, giving the dragon as much thrust as he could. They kept going, faster and faster. He could see ships, earth-made, turned to scrap metal, tapering off as they approached the asteroid belt. 

“Is that…?” Yugi asked quietly. 

“Ceres,” Jou said, some sort of inner peace settling in his stomach as they sailed past it. 

“It takes the Coalition _months_ to reach Ceres,” Anzu murmured, bewildered. “How could we go so far, so quickly?” 

“Toto,” Jou said, jerking the levers aside to avoid another attack from the laser canon, “we’re not in Kansas anymore.” 

He’d done it, he realised in a calm corner of his mind. He was the first Garrison pilot to fly beyond Ceres; past the belt, further beyond… and then he saw Pluto out the side of the dragon. “Heh.” 

“What exactly is _funny?”_ Kaiba demanded. 

“Nothing,” he said. “Just… I wanted to land on Pluto before I retired.” 

The brunet rolled his eyes. “Celebrate your life goals later,” there was an air of impatience to his voice. “Or did you forget we’re still being chased by an _alien warship?”_

“What, did you miss the memo?” Jou grinned back at him. “We’re _in_ an alien warship!” 

~+~ 

Everybody was shaky as they climbed out of the dragon’s mouth, landing on an unknown territory – an _alien planet_ – at the end of a _wormhole_. 

The air was a little thin, but only as much as a mountainside was. They were at the edge of a large oasis, and standing in front of them was a pyramid. Like, an Egyptian pyramid. But in space. An _alien_ pyramid. 

Anzu looked around in awe “…what are we doing here?” 

As if to answer, the Black Dragon stood up and gave a ferocious roar at the pyramid itself. Way up at its apex, a bright light began to glow. There was a rumble, blue-white light beginning to appear in the mortar between the stones, and then a section of the wall in front of them split, sliding open to reveal a grand entrance. 

“…guess we’re going in,” Rebecca pushed her glasses farther up her nose. 

There was hesitation, and then Jou felt a sharp jab in his spine, causing him to stumble forward. “Lead the way then, Wheeler.” 

He shot a glare at Kaiba, but he did anyway. As they stepped into the grand entrance, the walls rumbled and closed behind them. He gave an uncertain laugh. “Guess we’ve gotta go forward.” 

Before anyone answered, if they were even going to, they were surrounded in blue light. A soft voice, feminine but robotic, announced: “Identity scan in progress.” Once the scan was finished, sconces around the room burst into the same blue-white light. Quickly, more sconces burst to life, leading down a tall hallway. 

The group was silent as they followed their guided path, up and around and up until Jou was pretty sure they’d reached the apex. As they turned a final corner, a pair of doors parted, and they stepped into what had to be a big control room, or the ship’s bridge. There were huge, elaborate sarcophagus that slowly began to raise out of the ground. 

Jou swallowed a jolt of terror. “Oh, heck. You don’t think there are _space mummies_ in there, do you?” He asked, his voice squeaking with panic. 

“Seriously?” Kaiba deadpanned, his tone all judgmental. 

“Hey! A flying magic robot dragon arm from a huge mecha hero landed us on an alien planet with an alien pyramid spaceship. And you think a _mummy_ is ridiculous?” Jou snapped back defensively. 

As he spoke, the sarcophagus nearest to him hissed as air released, and the glass panel at the front began to slide away. There totally _was_ a mummy inside! With a golden mask, painted with human features and wearing ceremonial robes, the mummy pitched forward. 

Jou caught them instinctively, even if it was an animated corpse. He gave a panicked yell before slamming his mouth shut. The mask slipped off and clanged as it bounced on the floor. Underneath there was an almost-human face: same in features and general shape, apart from strange glowing markings under the eyes, and the strangely coloured irises and pupils and pointed ears. 

  
[Artwork by zombiebass](http://bombiezass.tumblr.com)  


“Who are you?” A deep voice demanded, strangely accented. “Where’s Mahad?” 

“Who?” Jou asked, confused. 

Purple and red eyes squinted up at him. “Your ears… what’s wrong with them?” 

“…. huh?” He echoed, confused. 

“They’re _hideous!”_

With a sharp push forward, the mummy quickly had him pinned and incapacitated on the ground. “Who sent you? What have you done with the others?” 

“We don’t know about any others,” Rebecca said calmly. 

“A giant black robot dragon brought us here!” Jou added, distinctly not calm. 

  
[Artwork by zombiebass](http://bombiezass.tumblr.com)  


The alien – because that’s what they had to be – twisted Jou’s arm more harshly. “You have the black dragon? What happened to his paladin?” 

Yugi approached, carefully crouching beside Jou and the alien. “We don’t know anything about that,” he said in a gentle, calm voice. “Why don’t you tell us who you are, and we’ll see if we can help you.” 

The alien released Jou from their grip, and he scrambled up and away, shooting the alien an angry look. His arm had still been throbbing from when he’d fallen back on Earth, but now it was _screaming_ in pain. He cradled it to his chest and followed the rest of his friends in a line after the alien. 

~+~ 

Jou did his best to listen to the exposition. But he was exhausted, his arm hurt, and his adrenaline was crashing. Not to mention, it was in the deep hours of the dark morning back on Earth. 

What he didn’t pay attention to, he filled in the blanks with plots and facts from the cartoons he’d watched as a kid. The alien – who introduced himself as Prince Atem of Altea, and the girl Mana that he defrosted – were from a planet called Altea. They were at war with someone – something? – named Zorkon. They’d been asleep for three thousand years, and the ship’s computers told them that their planet had been destroyed. 

He couldn’t imagine that grief. He couldn’t sleep, sometimes, thinking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki – he couldn’t imagine the destruction of an entire _planet_. 

The prince and his… someone invited them to rest in some bed chambers. But as soon as Jou lay down, he couldn’t drift off. His body felt completely exhausted, but his brain was _wired._

They were in space, who even _knew_ how many light-years away from home. He’d flown a giant robot dragon through a wormhole, woken up an ancient prince, learned about a space war… And he couldn’t _stop_ thinking about the fact he forgot his wallet. It was such a stupid thing to focus on, but he couldn’t get it out of his mind. The wallet, thrown on the desk – he’d thought about grabbing it when they were going up to look at the meteor shower, but decided he wouldn’t need it. It’s not like they would be going anywhere. And he _never_ went out without his wallet, just in case. 

He took out his phone, pressing the button to light up the screen. There on the lock screen was a selfie of him and his sister. He hadn’t told her he was going anywhere. They’d find the security footage of him stealing his father’s car and driving it out into the desert, and then there would be nothing else. He’d be _missing,_ and she’d never know what happened to him. 

Giving up on sleep, he got up and headed to the door. It swooshed open as he approached, and he stepped out into the small sitting area outside. There was a huge window fixed into the wall, looking out at the strange planet and the night sky filled with unfamiliar stars. 

A silhouetted figure was standing in front of the glass, and when he turned, Jou was a little irritated to recognise the shape of the hair. “Mullet.” 

“Wheeler.” 

He came over to stand on the other side of the huge pane of… was it glass? He was gonna call it glass. 

“Can’t sleep?” 

“No,” Kaiba replied. 

He didn’t seem to be interested in offering more. Jou lifted one arm, resting it on the window and laying his head against it to block out his view of Kaiba. “Me neither.” His breath didn’t fog up the ‘glass’, which was cool. He could still stare at the world outside. “Do you think we can leave first thing?” 

“Leave?” Kaiba asked, sounding surprised. “Weren’t you all nuts for the whole ‘ _we’re in space_ ’ thing?” 

“I mean, I am. But… we just _left._ Nobody knows where we are, or what happened… I don’t even have a change of clothes.” 

He got an annoyed grunt in response. “Priorities.” 

Jou’s glare hardened. “Just because you’re a grumpy shit without anyone who cares about you doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have families worrying about us back home!” 

“Sure,” Kaiba sneered back. “Like your father who’ll be glad you’ve disappeared so he doesn’t have to worry about you embarrassing the entire Garrison.” 

Jou just froze. “You’re such an _asshole,”_ he hissed. He stood up straight and dropped his hands down by his side so he could bunch them into fists. “Forget this.” 

He stomped out, following a pull in his gut until he hit the bottom of the pyramid. It turned out to be a hangar of sorts, with a few kinds of passenger pods. His dragon was curled up in one of five huge docks. 

“Hey there, gorgeous,” he greeted tiredly. 

The dragon’s eyes flared red and lifted his head up enough to lower the gangway. He gently patted the metal nose and as he passed underneath into the cockpit. He settled into the pilot’s seat, but the controls didn’t light up. 

He reached out and held the levers. “Hey… can you take me home?” 

The corner of his mind the dragon had made his own shifted, and he almost felt him rifling through his thoughts until the image of Shizuka on the beach came to the forefront of his mind. 

Jou nodded. “She needs me. We left too quickly; we didn’t even get to tell anyone where we were going.” 

There was a rumbling purr in his mind, soothing his worry. Then a wordless request, and when he agreed, it begun over again. But more than just images this time – he was flying the black dragon, but he _felt_ wrong. There was a cruelness to his thoughts and feelings as he sailed through a fleet of ships, pulling the trigger over and over again and blasting small fighter ships out of space. 

“Zorkon!” a voice was yelling in his ears, coming from a heavy helmet he could feel surrounding his head. “Stop! There are civilians on that ship!” 

In answer, he felt a twist of glee as he adjusted his grip and pulled the trigger again. 

The memory shifted before he saw the ship explode, but he knew it had happened. He felt sick, scrambling with the levers anxiously. 

_Understand_ , the dragon’s wordless mind pressed him. 

Another memory. He was someone else now – feeling stronger and broader than himself, but not as hulking as the first person. Brown hair hung in his eyes. There was a weapon in his hand, a wicked curved blade with another blade curling over the handguard. He was running at someone, at a tall figure in demonic-looking armour. But as he got close, a hand lifted him up and hung him out in the air. 

“ _Hermos,”_ a hateful voice hissed from the mouth of the armour. “You dare think you can challenge _me?_ The black dragon is _mine.”_

He choked out an answer: “He chose _me.”_ In a swift movement he jammed the sword tip into the armpit of the armour, causing the demon knight to drop him. He rolled into the fall and got back to his feet. “You’re _corrupted_ by darkness! You can’t be the black paladin!” 

The demon reached down with a clawed hand – and Jou was startled to realize in his own awareness that it wasn’t _armour_. That’s what Zorkon just _looked like_. The clawed hand took up the sword from the ground, and it turned into a now-familiar black light until it formed a sort of curved handle that had nothing attached to the front. _A bayard,_ the dragon-corner of his brain whispered, _the weapon of a Paladin of Exodia._

In the memory, he stood up and ran towards Zorkon again. But he was easily smacked aside and crashed into a window. The glass cracked, but the armour he was wearing seemed to take the brunt of the force. 

Zorkon pressed one foot into his shoulder. The glass cracked more and more. “I will _break_ you for your insolence, you weakling. No other than me is worthy of piloting the black dragon!” He lifted the bayard, and it became a jagged looking blade which Zorkon swung down towards one of Hermos’s immobilized hands. 

The memory ended before the blow hit but Jou shuddered, lurching forward in the pilot seat in the force of snapping out of it. A phantom feeling burned up his already injured arm. “Why are you showing me this?” He whispered. 

There was only an apologetic purr from the dragon inside his mind, and then a third memory appeared. 

He was the second guy again, “Hermos.” He turned to the speaker and saw someone who looked a lot like Prince Atem, but with blue-coloured hair and a nasty scar slicing through his eye. 

“Timæus,” Hermos greeted, his eyes lingered on the scar, and the memory of how he got it simmered just below the surface. The blow he had taken from Zorkon’s bayard, during Hermos’s rescue. And the thought of Critias, who would never speak again now. That was guilt he was feeling, for his maiming being remedied while they still suffered from theirs. 

Jou could _feel_ the difference. His arm felt wrong, and when it appeared in his vision – Hermos had looked down at it right then – it was some sort of futuristic metal prosthetic. 

“Oh _quiznak_ ,” Jou hissed, outside his mind, outside the memory. That was a new word. Something Hermos liked to use. It was like… all the swear words he knew combined and magnified. Oh he was so going to use that from now on. 

Zorkon had _taken his arm_. Just because the black dragon had chosen someone new to pilot him? This Zorkon guy was a real bastard. 

“We’ve arrived at the—” 

Excitement bubbled up and Hermos cut the other guy off, rushing past him to get to an exit. But as soon as he stepped into the room he could see clearly out of the huge the window. Jou’s insides broke. Beyond the glass of the window was a gorgeous planet – all reds and oranges and soft yellows. It was _home._ Orichalcos. But it was quickly being surrounded by enemy ships. 

“No…” he whispered. 

But even as he rushed to the window, one hand pressed against the glass, all weapons fired _directly_ on the planet's surface. There was a scream tearing ragged at his throat, as he slammed his fist over and over against the unbreakable glass. 

_“Zorkon!”_

The earth began to crack, and Jou yanked himself violently from the memory before he had to _see._ The emotional blowback had him gagging, slumped forward against the levers of the dashboard. 

_Can you take me home?_ he’d asked. 

_Yes,_ was the answer. _But Zorkon will follow you there._

He shuddered and got back to his feet. Jou had to talk to the others. 

~+~ 

Atem sat on a golden throne in the centre of the command deck, hands resting on the glowing sections of the armrests. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and holograms hummed to life in the air of the room. 

“Whoa.” Rebecca gasped, impressed. She turned in place to look at projection. “It’s a star map.” 

Atem turned to acknowledge her with a nod, and began to speak. In front of him appeared five dragon holograms, about the size of his face. 

“Exodia, as you were shown, is a fierce warrior composed of five parts: five dragons guided by five paladins.” 

With a regal gesture of his hand, the middle dragon sailed across the room and stopped before Yugi. “The dragon Gandora,” Atem said, as it flexed and stretched in the air. “The head of Exodia, a master of light. His paladin must see clearly, be a strong leader; brave, with a strategic mind, and great skill.” 

Yugi looked about, confused, then pointed at himself with a shy look. “Me?” 

“Your ba echoes that of the dragon Gandora,” Atem’s voice was calm and reassuring. “I am not mistaken in this choice.” 

“Ba?” Jou echoed, confused. 

“An old word… it means your _essence._ What makes you, _you,”_ Atem explained. 

A small map appeared next to the hologram, and Rebecca shifted over to look at it, pushing up her glasses. “It looks like it’s nearby.” 

“Yes,” Atem replied, nodding with a proud smile. “The dragon Gandora was sealed deep inside the ship. He can only be released when all four other dragons are present.” 

Next, he pushed a white dragon across the room to…ugh, Kaiba. His blue eyes narrowed on the little hologram as it approached… but Jou couldn’t shake the sense that he was pleased. 

“The dragon Kisara, the most powerful of all dragons, the guiding hand of Exodia, mistress of electricity. Her paladin must have great inner strength, and be firmly grounded in himself and his place in the universe.” 

_Stubborn. The white paladin has to be stubborn as hell_ , Jou translated internally, giving a low smirk. 

“He must be clever, and forward thinking.” Prince Atem was still talking. “He must look to the future and build towards it.” A little map appeared beside the dragon, and it drifted to its place across the stars. 

Next, Jou watched as the holographic black dragon floated towards him, a slight smile crossing his face. 

“The Black Dragon,” Prince Atem said. Dude, didn’t he get a name like Gandora or Kisara? “The fist of Exodia, master of the inferno. His paladin is the greatest warrior – fierce and loyal. He must trust in his instincts, and always give the team his best.” 

Jou was silent. What was he supposed to say to _that_? 

The black dragon floated over to rest beside Gandora. They were in the same place, after all. 

Next, Atem sent a yellow dragon over to Anzu, who cupped it in her hands with a blink. “The dragon Millennia, the left leg of Exodia, mistress of earth. Millennia’s paladin is the heart of Exodia. She must be compassionate and kind, and put the needs of the team before herself. She is the grounding leg of the team, and if she does not give them support, the whole team is unbalanced.” 

…yeah. That fit. Jou watched Yugi give her a shy smile, and he held up a thumb over his shoulder. 

The yellow dragon sailed across the room from the white dragon, almost as far away as they could possibly get from one another. 

“Finally, we have the dragon Illustria,” Prince Atem said, pushing the last dragon to rest before Rebecca. “The right leg and the spine of Exodia, mistress of life. Her paladin must be highly intelligent – to understand how everything is connected to one another, and what small changes will affect the world around us. She decides the stance of Exodia, and her strength is the backbone of the team.” 

Jou didn’t know much about Rebecca – she tended to keep to herself at the Garrison. But even as he heard the description, it just _felt_ right. Anzu would be their foundation, Rebecca would be their steadiness, Yugi would be their leader, and Kaiba would be their guide…and Jou would punch the people that got in their way, he guessed. 

The teal-coloured dragon sailed far across the room – and Jou bet, if he looked opposite that one, they’d find the Milky Way. They’d literally scattered the dragons to the corners of the universe. 

“So,” Jou said, leaning forward. “What’s the plan?” 

~+~ 

“I would like to point out that I hate this plan,” Jou complained loudly. 

Kaiba looked distinctly unimpressed. “Yes,” he answered, “you've said as much about three times.” 

Why did **he** have to be the one stuck flying Kaiba to get the Kisara dragon? Anzu and Rebecca had gone in one of the pyramid’s pods to their dragons. But Atem had declared that he would fly the Black Lion and take Kaiba. 

“We're flying _directly_ into _enemy territory,”_ he said, “with no weapons, and no back-up.” 

“You have the black dragon,” Kaiba replied impatiently. “That's your weapon _and_ your back-up.” 

Jou frowned and glanced at Kaiba. He was standing beside his pilot chair, one hand fixed firmly on the safety strap above them. The other was somewhere behind the chair, too far for Jou to see. “I meant for _you.”_

Kaiba shrugged. As if he was so _great_ he didn’t _need_ weapons or back-up. Jerk. “You drop me in, and I'll get to the dragon.” 

“Hope you're ready then,” he muttered. He pierced through the strange pale planet's atmosphere, his breath stuttering just a moment. The entire planet was made of some sort of frosted white crystal - he'd assumed it was ice. It was beautiful. 

He clocked the radar thing, adjusted their trajectory and focused on snaking between the large towers of ice. “Looks like that's where you're going, Mullet” he grunted between his teeth. 

Ahead of them, there were more of those strange alien-ships they'd avoided while flying away from earth: the Galra Ships. They were drilling into the base of a large, frosted crystal. 

Jou swooped as close as he could. “I'm gonna drop you down and give you cover,” he said. “Try and keep out of sight.” 

Kaiba didn't argue, which surprised Jou more than anything else. He just headed to the gangway and crouched by the door. 

Jou reached out with his mind and coaxed Black to open his mouth. The dragon responded with a sort of patient amusement, and showed him a lever on the dashboard he could use to do it manually. 

“Lazy,” Jou teased fondly. He got a rumble of amusement in return. Once Kaiba had cleared the gangway, he jerked the lever back up into place to close his mouth. 

He twisted the steering levers around, Black's serpentine body twisting in mid-air – _what a head spin_ – to turn and face the enemy ships. The windshield lit up with an overlay, tracking Kaiba's trajectory down onto the top of the tower. He even rolled neatly into the drop, the jerk. 

Jou tapped the earpiece Mana had equipped them both with. “You hear me, Mullet?” 

“It's not a mullet,” came the sullen reply. 

“Taking that as a yes,” he said smugly. He squeezed the trigger on his right lever, firing a blast of red light towards the enemy ship. “I dunno if they've spotted you yet. Found a way in?” 

“Working on it,” was the annoyed grunt he received in return. 

They both went quiet for a while. Jou focused intently on the ships, taking out their big laser canon first and foremost before focusing on cat-and-mouse tactics, trying to lure the attention of as many ships as possible away from the tower and away from his exposed classmate. 

A loud, Japanese curse spat out of his earpiece. 

“Report in?” 

“There's some kind of... android things in here,” Kaiba said. “They've got guns.” 

“Guns are bad,” he agreed with a wince. “Bullets or...?” 

“Lasers.” There was a grunt, and then the sound of a scuffle and crumpling metal. “Okay. I commandeered a weapon. Going radio silent.” 

Jou dragged his full focus back onto the air fight around him. One of them had repaired their big laser canon and he swore, twisting Black quickly out of its trajectory. “Incoming – big laser blast!” 

It made the whole tower tremble, shards of crystal falling off the sides. 

“Kaiba, report!” 

“I said radio silence, Wheeler,” came the impatient, angry reply. “But I'm fine. Barely even felt it this deep.” 

Jou worked on taking out that canon again, and then repeating his attacks on the previous ones. “Uh-oh.” 

“Doesn't sound good.” 

“They've got missiles,” he muttered, waiting until the last moment to twist Black out of the way. “Quiznak! _Tracking_ missiles!” He gritted his teeth and ducked around the nearby towers, trying to evade as best as he could. 

He managed to avoid most of them, but one missile caught Black's right flank. Swearing violently, Jou nearly fell out of his seat as the dragon lurched sideways and slammed violently into the side of the tower. There was a painful pop of bone and the all-too-familiar pain in his shoulder. 

He heard Kaiba's voice, barely audible over the squealing in his ears. “I felt that one. Can't you take the canons out?” 

Jou only grunted in answer. Grabbing his arm, he bit his teeth down on the padded collar of his jacket.His shoulder popped back into its socket with the usual explosion of pain, but he tried to brush it off. 

“I'm struggling out here, Kaiba,” he grunted. “You find your dragon yet?” 

There was only static in answer. 

“If you're dead I'm gonna kick your ass!” He yanked on Black's steering wheel, trying to ignore the pain radiating across his shoulder and down his arm. Still no response, just the crackle of static. 

Damn it. He'd killed Kaiba. He was going to be in so much trouble. 

What was he supposed to do? He turned to the enemy ships, intent on taking them out either way. With a spark of an idea in his mind to guide him, he twisted the handles on the levers, and suddenly the equilibrium of whole dragon shifted. 

Now he stood on back legs, claws up and ready for attacking. Okay... _this_ he knew how to do. Handles hooked around his hands; he drew one hand back and launched forward in a punch. The thick, black metal claws tore through the exterior of the enemy ship that was cornering him. Small explosions ripped up the damaged hull. The whole ship blacked out, falling to the ground. 

Through the burst of static, he heard Kaiba's voice. 

“Oh, good. You're not dead,” he muttered. A pedal popped out under his foot, accompanied by a brief tutorial from his dragon. He hooked his ankle around the pedal and swung it around, feeling the motion of Black's tail swinging around and taking out a small group of pilot vessels. 

From the corner of his eye, Jou saw something bright that grabbed his attention. The tower was lighting up with blindingly white light that _crackled_ with visible electricity. A few seconds letter, the entire tower split, and a white dragon burst upward. 

In an unobtrusive corner of his dashboard, a video feed of what he had to assume was the other cockpit popped up. “Got the dragon.” 

“Thank _quiznak,_ ” Jou said. “Alright. Let’s head back, Moneybags. You're in no way ready to engage.” 

“I'm more prepared than you are,” Kaiba argued, but didn't offer any additional protests. He just headed directly towards the planet's white sky and the wormhole that opened up as he approached. 

Jou twisted the handles of the lever back into first position, shifting Black back onto all-fours, and launched after Kaiba. At least they'd made it out alive. 

~+~ 

“Hey, Rebecca,” he said, leaning close to her as she listened to Yugi and Anzu eagerly recount their adventure on a jungle planet fetching her dragon. “You still got that scarf?” 

“Why?” She frowned suspiciously at him. 

“Building a death ray,” he replied flatly. 

She snorted a laugh. “Sure you are.” But she didn’t ask any more questions. She unpacked it from her bag, carefully replacing the tech it had been wrapped around as a cushion. 

He just grunted and tied it up into a makeshift sling for his arm. It wasn't the best choice, but he did what he could with what they had. 

Kaiba entered alongside Mana and Prince Atem. 

“Good news!” Mana announced, before they were even a few steps in. “All dragons are in functional order. We can go open the safety on Gandora.” She paused and tilted her head at Jou. “Is that some sort of Earth fashion?” 

Jou winced as his friends' attention suddenly settled on him. “Joey,” Yugi said, climbing over the back of the couch to come to his side. “You dislocated it again?” 

He shrugged. “Things got a bit physical in the.... well, today." Falling through the ground to find the black dragon, an alien mummy prince pinning him by the arm to the ground, and then the fight in Black… It really was just too much. 

“Do you need...?” Yugi trailed off. Of course he needed whatever it was he was going to say, but anything useful Yugi might have was back at the Garrison on the other side of the universe. 

“About that...” Kaiba folded his arms and gave them all a firm look. “I'm going to take a supply trip back to Earth. If you want to write letters, or need anything collected – medication or the like – tell me and I'll go get it.” 

Jou sat up with a scowl. “I thought we already _agreed._ It's not safe to go back to Earth. You can't just go...” 

“It's not safe for you and Black to go back home,” Kaiba corrected, giving him a superior look. “Kisara and I will be fine.” 

“Just because you think you’re a better pilot –” he began. 

Kaiba quickly cut him off. “Not that. Kisara is built with a cloaking device. It’s safest for everyone if I am the one who goes.” 

Jou turned to the rest of the group, looking for backup, but they were already taking note-paper and pens out of Rebecca's bags to write home. Explain the situation. 

He turned a final look to Prince Atem and Mana. They at least would argue. But the prince was giving a solemn nod in answer to his silent question. “He is correct. I would not recommend the other dragons take the journey, but Kisara is capable of passing undetected through the Galra scanners. If the journey is to be made, they must be the ones to go.” 

Jou gave a frustrated sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. “I'll... Look, I'm going to make a video,” he muttered. “I'll set the message up and everything, I just need you to hit send when you've got Wi-Fi or something. Think you can manage that?” 

Kaiba looked wary but nodded his assent. 

Jou headed back to his room to grab his cracked phone. He squeezed the button down to turn it on, giving the half-full battery symbol a tired glare. He sat back, made himself comfortable, and held up the phone. 

“Shizuka,” he murmured in Japanese. She was pretty fluent, but their mother wasn't. “Listen... it's gonna be awhile before you can contact me again. I'm... You wouldn't really believe me if I told you. I'm on an alien spaceship. There’re these robot dragons - like that _Go Lion_ show we watched when we were kids, you know? And I'm one of the Paladins. There's this seriously bad guy taking over the universe... and he knows how to track me. It's not safe for me to come back to... well, probably even our galaxy, and maybe not for a long time.” 

_Maybe forever,_ he thought, eyes welling up. 

“I'm doing this for you,” he promised. “Protecting you, just like how we used to play when we were kids, right? But... for real. Your big brother is gonna be a hero. I hope you'll be proud of him.” 

He scrubbed at his tears, glad she probably wouldn't be able to see them. He took a shaky breath, and fixed on a smile. “So, my dragon is called the Black Dragon. He's super cool...” 

~+~ 

Even with the wormhole crossing the universe in a matter of moments, Jou felt every minute that Kaiba was missing. Mana and Prince Atem were busy resetting the pyramid after its three-thousand-year snooze mode. Rebecca followed them around, fascinated. 

Yugi and Anzu were hanging out with him in the sitting room by their bedrooms, but he couldn't hold the thread of their conversation for longer than a few moments. What if his phone went flat before the message sent? What if he just _disappeared_ and Shizuka never found out what had happened to him? She'd be _devastated._

Not that she'd be any better with his message, but at least she'd know he'd gone to do something, instead of just vanishing into the desert in their father's stolen car. 

Finally, the wormhole in the sky opened and the white dragon reappeared on a leisurely, smooth flight towards the base of the pyramid. Kaiba always had been the pilot with the best simulator scores in the Garrison, but did he have to show off out _here_ too? 

“Kaiba's back,” he told the other two. 

They fell quiet, and then there was a hurry to the door. Kaiba had been gone for about twelve hours organising everything. Jou followed them at a sedate pace, not in a rush to meet back up with mullet head. 

At least his arm was feeling better after Mana had rubbed some sort of healing goo into his shoulder and back. It had burned like ice, but at least it fixed the tense muscles. 

They met Kaiba in the docking bay. Kaiba was stacking a few moving boxes and nondescript bags out of the gangway of his dragon. His lips pressed together into a line as he saw them, but he straightened up to meet them. 

“I visited your families,” he told the three other Paladins. “Gave them your letters, had them bring some things they thought you would want or need.” He gestured to the boxes. “I couldn't get ahold of yours, Wheeler,” he said, darting the blond a grim look.. 

Jou shrugged. “Did you send my message?” He asked instead. 

Kaiba nodded and tossed his phone back in his direction. “Yeah. It went through fine.” 

Jou fumbled to catch it and tucked it in his pocket. 

“I got some basic foods and some long-term rations,” Kaiba continued to explain. 

Rebecca started eagerly explaining about the automatic kitchen they had on the ship, that produced a nutrient-rich diet that could be attuned to their species. 

Kaiba just shrugged. “Well. It'll be nice to have some real food to supplement that.” 

He started explaining some other things he'd gotten – but Jou was no longer listening. His eyes had locked on movement inside the gangway, and he shifted into a defensive stance. It took a moment for the others to catch on to his tension - and when Kaiba did, his posture immediately shifted to something ready for combat. 

“Who is _that?”_ Jou demanded. 

Kaiba didn't glance back, but he did call. “Mokuba, it's alright. You can come out.” 

A small figure – quiznak, an actual _kid_ – stepped down from the gangway. He couldn't be more than twelve years old! There was enough of a resemblance between the two of them that Jou knew who he must be. 

“You brought...your quiznaking brother to space.” His fists clenching tightly. “You took him away from Earth and brought him to the middle of a _space war_?! _”_

“I don't expect you to understand, Wheeler,” Kaiba sneered back. “The safest place for him is here, where I can protect him.” 

Jou refused to listen anymore. He threw up his hands in disgust and stalked out. He headed up to the bridge and stood by the wide window. Kaiba had brought his brother here. He'd visited the others' families and decided none of them were worth the same protection. No, that was only for his brother. 

He thought about Shizuka, alone in New York. But he forced himself to take a deep breath. No. She wasn't alone. She had their mother, as little as that was; their grandma; and all of her friends there. She would be safe on Earth, as long as he didn't let Zorkon track him back there. 

The doors slid open and when he glanced back, Prince Atem was walking in. His stride was confident, bold, but there was something soft in his expression. “Black Paladin,” he spoke, his deep voice managing to fill the whole room with no effort at all. “It is time to release Gandora.” 

~+~ 

“If you are to become proper Paladins,” Prince Atem said, “then first you must be properly outfitted.” 

“So what, uniforms?” Jou asked. 

In a room just off the command centre, there was a space divided into five alcoves. Inside each alcove was old-fashioned suits of armour upon statues. 

“The first Paladins of Voltron,” Prince Atem explained, his voice respectful but mournful. “Timaeus,” he said, and pointed to the centre where he'd guided Yugi to stand. “Critias,” he said, pointing at Kisara's paladin. “...Hermos.” 

Jou noticed that slight hesitation. He glanced quickly at Atem, who was avoiding his gaze. Hermos hadn't been the _first_ Black Paladin. Jou had seen that. But he brushed the thought aside to question Atem about it later. 

“Malik,” Atem continued, pointing to first Millennia, and then Illustria's Paladin. “...and Akhnamkanon.” 

They looked at the statues, and Jou wondered if they all felt the same overwhelming burden on their shoulders. All these guys were _dead,_ having lived thousands of years ago. 

“So… not to ruin the moment,” Jou said, though that was exactly what he was doing. “But that armour isn't going to fit us.” 

Atem's lips twitched down in slight annoyance but he nodded. “It will not.” He pressed a glowing panel on a centre console, and each of their partitions opened slightly. “That is ceremonial armour anyway,” he continued. “At the foot of the statues, you will find an arm brace. Please put it on and focus on your bond with the dragon.” 

Wondering what that had to do with anything, Jou stepped forward and into the niche. It was just a little too big, he noticed, the reserved space made too large to fit Hermos's comparatively small size. He picked up the wristband and turned outward to look at Atem for confirmation. At the nod, Jou slid up his jacket sleeve over his elbow and squeezed it over his hand to settle it in place. The wristband was made of the same black metal as his dragon, and it shrunk to fit itself neatly to the lower half of his forearm, below his wrist so he still had full motion of his hand. 

Prince Atem cleared his throat slightly. “You may want to remove your outer layers of clothing,” he said, sounding far too casual about the suggestion. 

Jou cringed, but stripped out of his clothes until he was only in his briefs. At least the alcoves weren't facing each other, so they didn't have to see one another. 

“Alright. Now that you're all down to your underthings, I want you to focus your bond with your dragons.” 

So Jou did. He closed his eyes, because it was always easier for him to focus when he did that. He felt out the corner of his mind where Black's consciousness usually sat and nudged at it until he felt their link open up and Black's purr of greeting rumbled through his thoughts. 

The foreign awareness seemed to search his body, until it found the brace on his right wrist. It burned hot, and then he felt material _moving,_ spreading out from the brace and crawling up his bare arms. Oh, fucking hell, what even _was_ this? It covered his whole body, settling over his skin like some sort of clingy, breathable... well, it had as much give as spandex. He really hoped it wasn’t actually spandex. 

But it wasn't done. Hot spots started spreading over the fabric, heating up until they transformed into something lightweight but still sturdy. The material travelled over his chest, shoulders, arms, upper and lower legs, and then around his waist. 

“Very good, Black Paladin,” Prince Atem said encouragingly, even as Jou felt something materialise into existence around his head. 

He opened his eyes when the brace cooled down to the normal level. He caught his reflection in the shiny metal of the alcove around him. He looked somewhere between a Storm Trooper and a Power Ranger – his body was clad in a black bodysuit and adorned with white armour of a plastic-metal alloy, accented with black for his dragon, interspersed with a couple strips of glowing red material. For his dragon's eyes, he guessed. 

Jou stepped out, keeping his eyes on the prince until he heard as he delivered the command for the rest of the team to come forward. They were all dressed the same way, with different colours for their dragons – barely noticeable in Kaiba’s case, except for the glowing blue strips to match his dragon's eyes. 

“Curious,” Prince Atem said, looking over their outfits. “The living armour must have drawn from your consciousness. Your predecessors’ looked vastly different.” 

“Okay, who thought about Storm Troopers?” Jou grumbled, tapping the white armour plates with his gloved fingers. 

None of his teammates answered, only waited as Prince Atem pressed his hand to the centre console again. The front panel parted, revealing a storage space with five niches for weapons. Four of them were full, but there was one spot that was empty. 

_Bayards,_ Black whispered in his mind. 

“These are bayards,” Atem said, gesturing to Jou and the others to come forward. “The traditional weapon of the Paladins of Exodia. They will change shape to a form fitted to each paladin's skills and advantages.” 

Jou stood back. He already knew there wasn't one for him. 

Yugi’s shifted first, forming a sort of pole-staff. Anzu's became a beautiful, sleek bow with a glowing string; as she pulled it back, the arrow formed itself out of golden light. Rebecca's stayed mostly the same, but as she flicked her wrist, a sort of glowing teal whip unfurled. Kaiba's shifted to a sleek, futuristic pistol of some kind. 

When Jou wandered his eyes back to Atem, his purple-and-scarlet eyes were looking at him seriously. “I'm afraid the black bayard has been lost.” 

Jou shrugged. “I’ll make do.” He was better at hand-to-hand combat than with weapons anyway. 

Atem nodded, and with a slight push, the centre console disappeared into the ground and glass reformed around the alcoves. “Now that you are properly outfitted as Paladins, it is time to train to become one.” 

~+~ 

When Jou went to bed, after their first day of training, he flopped face-down into the mattress and fell asleep before his magical, high-tech armour had time to phase out and leave him in his skin-tight bodysuit. But he didn't get the long, exhausted sleep he expected. After what could only be a few hours, Jou woke up and couldn't force himself to get back to sleep. 

So instead of trying, he got up. He might as well go to the kitchen and grab himself one of those sealed pouches filled with pure H2O. Back home, he used to grab a glass of water when he couldn't sleep. It wouldn't exactly be the same soothing motion of getting the glass, filling it up, drinking it and carrying it back to his room, but it would have to do. But when he entered the kitchen, he saw Mana looking sadly at something on the screen in her hands. Jou paused when he noticed the room wasn’t empty, but didn't step any further. 

She looked up and immediately turned off the screen, giving him a bright smile. “Oh, hello Joey!” she greeted. “What are you doing awake? It's still only one varga after zero.” 

“Uh.” He shifted to the side. “Woke up thirsty.” He headed over to the fridge and opened it up, taking out a pouch of water that was exactly the right temperature for drinking. Cool, but not enough to keep his teeth on edge. 

She nodded in understanding. “Well, if I can do anything for you, let me know!” 

Jou tilted his head slightly. He recognised this behaviour; he used this technique all the time. He gave her a slight smile. “Same.” 

She faltered, just a moment. “Oh, that's nonsense. I'm the Prince's priestess, there's no need to worry about me.” 

“And I'm a Commodore's son,” he replied. “It doesn't matter what we are, we're still human. Or... well, sentient beings.” 

Mana giggled slightly, watching him appreciatively. “...thank you, Joey.” She slid down from her seat on the counter, getting to her feet. “I was about to go test the star maps. Would you like to come?” 

He thought about it, thought about the empty room and the uncomfortable bed waiting for him, and nodded. “Yeah, lead the way.” 

They headed up to the bridge, and he sat down to watch as she pressed a few buttons, turning on the hologram of the universe that took up the whole room. She chattered away, talking about the galaxy they were in, the peoples that had populated it when she was last awake, and the things they produced. 

“Hey, Mana?” Jou asked softly, when her chatter lolled. 

“Yes?” She asked, tilting her head at him like a bird. 

“Can I ask a question?” 

She giggled slightly. “You just did!” She gave him a bright smile. “But yes, you can ask me more questions if you like.” 

“Why does your castle look like a pyramid?” 

She smiled. “It's no coincidence. Our people visited your Egypt four thousand years ago.” 

He twitched, glancing at her. “...you know, there are people on Earth who think that aliens visited Egypt,” he pointed out. “Most people think they’re crazy.” 

She shook her head. “We stayed there for some time. We learned many things from the mighty Egyptians, such as pyramid building, and Ka magic.” 

“That's not the way it usually goes in the theories.” Jou smiled. She tilted her head and he explained how the theorists thought that the aliens had done all those mind-boggling things. 

She looked bewildered. “Do they think so little of the peoples in their own history?” She asked. “The Egyptians were a major influence on Altean culture. Their effects can still be seen in our everyday lives.” She froze, and looked down sadly. “Could be.” 

Jou reached out and pressed a hand onto her shoulder to offer her a little bit of comfort. “Still.” 

She gave him a soft smile. “You are very kind, Joey of Earth.” 

Jou chuckled. “Thank you, Mana of Altea.” 

They watched the star maps for a while before Mana yawned a few too many times and excused herself for bed. Jou stayed for a moment longer before he shut down the map and headed back to the paladin's quarters. He froze when he saw the common room wasn't empty. He recognised that mullet, even silhouetted. He opened his mouth to make a snarky comment, but Kaiba turned to glare at him. He held one finger to his lips, and nodded down towards his lap slightly. 

When Jou got closer to his own door, he saw the kid asleep with his head on Kaiba's knee. His anger softened to mild annoyance, and he just gave Kaiba a vague nod to signal the momentary truce before he headed back into his room. He did manage to get a little more sleep, and after a sleep and some of the instant coffee Kaiba had smuggled out of their galaxy he felt human enough again to go back to training. 

~+~ 

It was only a day or two before the enemy ships arrived. Jou waited until he was in his elevator-chute before kicking off his clothes and giving his wrist brace a little smack. He didn't actually need it to activate the armour, but Mana had suggested they each come up with a kind of gesture that represented themselves that they were putting on the armour, so they could activate the muscle memory and synapses without concentrating. Jou had decided to just smack it, like he was hitting a button. 

He hadn't seen the others' methods, but he figured Anzu and Rebecca would go all magical-girl anime style on their wardrobe changes. 

By the time he hit the floor of their hangars, the helmet was just materialising into place. 

“Is this happening?” Yugi's voice crackled to life in the little speaker next to his ear. “Are we actually doing this?” 

“Deep breaths, Yug,” he soothed, climbing into Black's mouth and heading up the gangway. “It's just like the simulators at the Garrison, okay?” 

“Idiot,” Kaiba's voice muttered in his other ear. 

But it helped, it must've –- because when Yugi spoke again, his voice was calm and steady. “Alright, team,” he said, over the sounds of his dragon booting up. “Stay close, we'll fly out of the atmosphere and take stock first. We’ll go from there.” 

Jou grinned. “Aye-aye captain,” he said, settling into the pilot's chair and reaching his hands for the levers when the seat slid close enough. 

“I can't heeeaaaar yooouuu!” Yugi joked, half-laughing. 

“Aye-aye captain!” Rebecca and Anzu joined in with him that time. Kaiba just gave an irritated huff. They flew together, past the soft violet sky out into the darkness of space. 

“Oh, quiznak,” Jou hissed. 

Their opponents were...a lot _more_ than he was expecting. The ship was the biggest he'd seen yet, and flanked by two smaller-but-still large ships. “Yugi? Instructions?” 

There was a deep breath, and then Yugi's voice was calm. “Joey, Black is fastest, veer left and take out the laser cannon on the smallest ship. Kaiba, can you and Kisara handle the right one alone?” 

“Affirmative,” Kaiba said. 

“Anzu, Rebecca, with me,” Yugi said. “We're going after the cannons on the big one.” 

Jou twisted Black around the side of the large ship, evading a smaller blast from some other canons while the big one powered up. Lights tracked across the windshield, identifying and locking on to the canon. “Target acquired,” he mumbled to himself. He lined up and squeezed the triggers for the laser-cannon inside Black’s mouth – and the black light fizzled out onto some sort of round forcefield. He jerked Black aside before they hit. “They've got a particle barrier!” he warned the others. 

“Team, test the range of the barriers. Report in.” 

“We've got fighter pilots incoming!” Kaiba said. 

“Anzu, I want you to concentrate on the fighter pilots,” Yugi said. 

“Got it.” Out of the corner of his screen, he saw Anzu's golden dragon break off from formation and head for the swarm spilling out of the hangars. 

Jou tested the barrier of his ship. “Seems like mine's just covering the cannon. Looks like it's nearly powered up too.” 

“Evasive maneuvers, Joey,” Yugi replied. 

“I'm sending you all Illustria's mapping of the ships,” Rebecca said. “She's pinpointed some key targets.” 

The map overlayed the view of the ship through his windshield, little pinpoints popping up for engine rooms and exhaust ports. 

Jou swiped it away with an irritated hand. “Yugi?” He prompted. 

“Kaiba, you aced the engineering final. What's the quickest way to destabilise these ships?” 

The overlay came back and a specific point at the back of the ship lit up. “Those are the fuel reserves,” Kaiba explained. “If they use a combustible material...” 

Jou gave a panicked yell as he barrel-rolled away from the laser cannon that fired his way. 

“...but we need to decommission these cannons first, or we won't get time to line up an attack strategy.” 

“Rebecca,” Anzu said. “Our weapons can’t fire when the shields are up on Earth. Try a blast when it's firing. Their tech can’t be that advanced.” 

Jou fought off a couple fighter pilots while he waited to find out what the hell they were talking about. 

“Oh, yes!” Rebecca said eagerly. “The particle barrier has to go down for their blasts to fire. It's a small window, but if we slip past the barriers while they're firing we can take the cannons down.” 

“Okay, team!” Yugi said. “Time the cannon fire, slip in and take down the cannons. Then head back to the fuel reserves!” 

“You'll want to be far away from the reserves when they blow,” Kaiba said. “Something this size?” 

“Big boom, yeah, yeah, we got it,” Jou sniped. “Kaiba, your cannon is about to fire within five–” 

“Yes, _thank you_ Wheeler, I can _see.”_

“Argue later!” Yugi scolded them. “Rebecca, on your left!” 

It was a tricky maneuver, but they did it. They slipped past the barrier, dodging the blasts, and took out the canons. Jou flew down the spine of the ship, letting Black's claws scrape the exterior, though there were several complaints about the noise. Any damage would only be to their advantage. At the back, he lined up with the fuel reserve and squeezed down on the triggers for his weapon. 

Jou stayed only long enough to see the armour around the fuel reserves give way and flew as fast as he could away from the blast. “Brace yourselves!” 

The shock-waves catapulted him forward, and he had to swerve to avoid another planet's distant moon. 

“Status report?” Jou asked. 

“The blast took my navigation out,” Rebecca complained. “I'm trying to get Illustria to reboot.” 

“Rebecca, we need you on offensive,” Yugi said. “You’re going to have to aim manually until your nav is back up.” 

“Number two is about to blow,” Kaiba's said as Kisara jetted away from the radius. 

Jou landed Black on the surface of the moon to ride out the shockwaves. He couldn't help but snort as Kisara rolled like a tumbleweed past the moon. “Stabilisers okay there, Kaiba?” 

“Shut it.” 

“Was… anybody else expecting a bigger boom?” Jou asked, looking at the wreckage of the ships. Weren’t they supposed to be, like… nothing by now? 

“They must be using vapour-contained technology,” Kaiba replied, sounding almost fascinated by the concept. 

“...meaning?” 

He sighed irritably. “No big boom,” he replied, throwing Jou’s exact words back at him. 

“Okay, we've got an issue back here,” Yugi said, his voice coming fast and laboured. “Kaiba, Joey, regroup!” 

Jou kicked off the moon and sped back towards the ship. As he watched, their three teammate's attempts at blasting the fuel reserves of the large ship were ineffectual. 

“The armour on this one is too thick.” Anzu panted, seemingly frustrated by the news. 

“Okay, get to a safe distance,” Jou said. “I'm gonna use Black's claws.” 

“Are you actually an idiot?!” Kaiba said. 

“Kaiba!” Yugi scolded. “Jou, no, that's not worth the risk.” 

“If I pierce it, Black is fast enough to get away before it blows. Nobody else is!” 

“No. Suggestion denied,” Yugi said. 

“Then what?” Jou asked, frustrated. “Because the robots fixing that cannon are damn efficient.” 

“None of our blasts are strong enough,” Rebecca said, panting as heavily as Anzu and Yugi were. He realised his own breaths were harsh in his helmet too, heart thumping audibly in his ears. “If we all aimed and fired at the same time...?” 

“Okay everyone, on my mark,” Yugi said. Jou crossed in front of Kaiba, settling left of Yugi's, in the line between him and Anzu. Kaiba took the mirror place. “On three. One... two...” 

As hard as he squeezed the trigger, as much as he willed the blast to be stronger, their combined efforts just weren't enough. But as Jou yelled with the effort, hearing his team's voices in his ears, _something_ happened – like something in his mind opened up, like a sliding door or a window. He was aware of Black shifting, reforming slightly, and locking into place beside Gandora's shoulders. Then it wasn't just Black in his head. Black as an entity didn't exist anymore. Jou as an individual ceased to be. They were Exodia. There was a long moment when all ten of them were this single entity. This being that was somehow stronger than all of them, magnified over again. 

Then the moment passed. Jou was aware of his own body, sitting in the cockpit. He could feel Black surrounding him – and then weakly he could feel the same connection with the other eight consciousnesses. Exodia was focused on piercing the armour of the fuel tanks, destroying the ship that threatened the planet. 

The Rebecca-corner of their hivemind started calculating safe trajectory, how far they had to be away from the blast radius to get away unscathed. Together they could take more damage than the dragons. Jou heard Yugi's confirmation, the slight adjustment of their plan. Then Anzu and Rebecca working together, flying them back far enough. 

All at once – Jou and Black and Exodia – he raised his arm to point the cannon at the fuel tanks. He was aware of it in strange sensations, his hands directing the levers at the same time the mechanics of Black's body moved like muscle memory to raise the arm. 

He felt their whole body shifting - Anzu and Rebecca giving them a firm stance, Kaiba shifting back to prepare for the kickback, to keep them steady. Jou squeezed tight on the trigger, felt the energy gathering from all ten of them, flooding through his arm, Black's spine, Exodia's arm, and blasted out to strike the fuel tank. 

It exploded in an inferno that consumed the whole ship. The remaining fighter pilot ships blacked out in the air and floated in zero gravity. He felt their combined joy as a laugh bubbled out of his throat. 

“Kaiba!” he yelled. Or was he just thinking it? “Kaiba, dab with me!” 

In response, their unstoppable link, their collective consciousness, snapped like a rubber band and Jou slammed back into himself as their dragons disbanded. 

“Idiot,” Kaiba spat over the comms. 


	2. Some Assembly Required

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> [Art by Ariasune](http://www.ariasune.com/post/172792549489/look-at-you-glowing-like-a-solar-fire-youre)  
>  Look at you! Glowing like a solar fire. You’re something special, Jou.  
> [You’re gonna rattle the stars, you are!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BEhiWL1Pl0)

For the first night since they got here, he slept for more than an hour. Or, more accurately, he passed out and didn't wake up until he heard an alarm blaring, red lights frantically flashing throughout the rooms. 

“Paladins!” Atem's voice boomed over the intercom. “We’re under attack! Assemble on the bridge immediately!” 

Jou fell out of bed, limbs trapped inside blankets. He struggled up and grabbed his coat from the hook by the door, swinging it on. He was right behind the others. 

Yugi was still in his Garrison uniform, bayard in hand, hair sticking up in every direction and then some, wristband clasped over the top of his jacket. Rebecca and Anzu were both in some sort of silky dressing robe in the colours of their dragons with their bayards clutched in their hands. Rebecca's hair was up in two buns, a sleep-mask dangling around her neck; and Anzu's hair was pushed back with a makeshift headband, a bright green face mask on her face. Kaiba – the quiznaking jerk, _of course –_ was _already_ in his Paladin armour, helmet tucked under one arm. 

Jou realised, as they scrambled onto the bridge, that he was only wearing his silky boxers and his denim jacket hanging open. 

Atem's expression was angry as they came in, and he pressed a switch that shut the noise off. 

Kaiba’s expression was grim. “I’m guessing this wasn’t an actual attack?” He deadpanned, sounding unimpressed. 

“It’s a good thing that it wasn’t!” Atem growled. “It took you far too long to get here, and look at you all! You must _always_ be ready to form Exodia. Only Kaiba is in uniform and – Joey, you don’t even have _clothes_ on!” He pointed accusingly at the group where Anzu, Rebecca and Jou were gathered. “Where are your wristbands?” 

Jou tugged his jacket self-consciously over his chest, though it didn’t meet in the middle. “In my room,” he muttered, “with my clothes, and my dignity.” 

Atem rose up to his full height, though it wasn’t very impressive. “Mana and I have been up for vargas, getting the pyramid back into working condition. We had to run a test on the alarms, and we decided to test you as well.” He scowled at them all. “Needless to say, you all failed.” 

Kaiba opened his mouth to argue, but Mana interrupted: “You’re a team. If any of you fail, you all do.” 

Atem’s jaw clenched, a muscle twitching visibly. “Zorkon could attack in an instant. You need to be prepared to form Exodia at any moment.” 

Yugi sighed. “He’s right, guys. We should practice. I don’t know about all of you, but I’m not entirely confident in flying Gandora yet…” 

Jou rubbed his face, trying to massage out the sheer exhaustion he felt. “Okay. Let’s all get dressed and meet in the hangar.” 

Kaiba huffed and headed towards his elevator. Yugi, who was basically ready to go, stepped up to have a private, serious conversation with Atem and Mana. Jou just followed the girls out. 

Their rooms were across from each other and Jou trudged along the rest of the way towards his door. 

But he came to a stop when he heard a quiet, uncertain voice. “Nii-sama?” Jou was surprised by the fluent Japanese that flowed from the boy’s lips. “What’s going on? What was the alarm?” 

He turned to look. Kaiba’s younger brother was standing in the door of the white paladin’s bedroom, in oversized pyjamas, hugging a blanket to his chest. He rubbed one eye, looking so _lost_ that for a moment Jou couldn’t breathe. 

His heart split and bled. Yeah... how could he be mad that Kaiba went to get his kid brother? 

“Hey there,” he said, keeping to English for a reason he couldn’t quite pinpoint. “It’s okay. It was just an alarm drill. We’re gonna be training today, okay?” 

The kid just nodded, looking intimidated, and hid back inside the bedroom. 

Jou steeled himself, shoved anything soft in a box to be dealt with when things were better settled, and headed to change into his paladin armour. 

~+~ 

Training didn’t go well that first day. They flew around in formation, trying to cheat their way into assembling Exodia. But Jou knew it wouldn’t work, and he was pretty sure the others did too. He could feel Black, the sensation of his dragon in the corner of his brain already familiar even though it had only been several days. But he couldn’t feel the other Paladins. 

If he concentrated, he could feel Yugi, but his buddy was a bundle of anxiety and pressure that physically hurt to try and stay connected with. Jou tried to feel out Rebecca, their spine and the leg below him, but her brain was a wall of numbers and calculations and the moment she felt his dumb confusion, she shoved him away. Anzu was too far away; he couldn’t connect with her directly. And he didn’t even attempt to connect to the asshole rich-boy that was the other arm. 

Prince Atem, with something wild and almost sadistic in his eyes, announced his plan: the day before they had formed Exodia in the heat of battle. So he turned on the pyramid’s weapons systems and left them under the automated mercy of its targeting system. They scrambled, evading the weapons. Jou tried to pierce the pyramid’s shield at first, but rebounded hard and violently into the sand of the planet. 

After Mana silently turned off the weapons to test out another of the pyramid’s features, all five of them headed back to their area of the pyramid. 

Jou spent a good hour in the communal shower – after everyone else had washed off – under the violent spray of endless hot water, as if it could wash away the bitter sting of blame for their failure, for getting them stuck here in the first place, for abandoning Shizuka... 

He eventually forced himself out when Yugi knocked and asked if he’d fallen asleep in there. Jou slid back into the black undersuit of the armour before stepping out of the shower. He’d forgotten his clothes in the bedroom, and found out that the armband listened if he didn’t want to go the whole get-up. 

He headed back out to the common room, and Yugi asked what had taken him so long. 

He faked a yawn, mumbled, “Sorry, must’ve dozed off,” and collapsed face-first into one of the long lounges. Anzu didn’t even complain about having his bare feet in her face, just moved them until they were behind her head instead. Kaiba was squirrelled away in his room with his brother, but the remaining four of them fell asleep there, on the couches. 

A sound more reminiscent of an alarm clock, rather than a frantic emergency siren, woke them the next morning. Jou creaked one eye open, looking around. 

“Good morning, Paladins!” Mana said brightly. “Are you ready for another day of training?” 

He sat up, groaning, and cracking his spine. “I don’t know about Alteans,” he said, while everyone else sat up and tried to wake. “But on Earth we don’t do anything until breakfast happens.” 

“All right,” Mana said, “but we won’t tell Prince Atem.” 

Jou headed over to the closed bedroom door and knocked. “Come on, Kaibas. Breakfast.” 

Kaiba only took two bowls of food goo and went back to his room. After breakfast, he rejoined the four of them in the common room. 

“I’m not surprised that the five of you are struggling to assemble Exodia,” Mana said calmly. “The former paladins were brothers in arms, and fought many battles together before they found the dragons. I’ve convinced Prince Atem to allow me to try out my method.” 

“Your method?” Jou prompted, not feeling great about where this was going. 

She beamed. “Let’s go to the training deck!” 

Anzu’s eyes widened. “There’s a training deck?” 

~+~ 

Mana's training was no easier than Prince Atem's had been. And the prince had fired lasers at them for hours until Mana had taken pity on them! The first drill had seemed simple: they just had to hold up their shields and keep each other safe from the mild lasers coming from floating droid balls like they'd been stolen straight from Luke’s Jedi training in A New Hope. Yugi had panicked and ducked away from a laser instead of attempting to block it, causing Rebecca to disappear into the ground as the floor opened up. 

Yugi was next to fail, still flustered and ashamed of his mistake in letting one of their team members down. The three of them who remained bunched up in a tight knot, falling into a rhythm as they twitched their shields about to protect each other. 

They might have even succeeded, but Mana decided to turn up the difficulty level. 

Jou grinned cheekily. “How you holding up in a _real_ fight, Kaiba?” 

“Better than you are,” Kaiba said. 

“Bullsh—” 

“Boys!” Anzu hissed angrily. “Would you to stop _sniping_ at one another and concentr—” 

She didn't get to finish her sentence. Jou fumbled a very easy save and sent her dropping into the void below the floor. 

“Nice one, idiot!” Kaiba said. 

“Are you _kidding_ me?!” Jou turned to give Kaiba a piece of his mind, but felt something stung his back and the ground opened up beneath him. 

It was vindication when Kaiba landed on the safety net underneath the floor seconds after he did. 

~+~ 

“You must learn to fight as a unit,” Mana said over the speakers, from her place up there in a nice little safety observation room. "You will fight the gladiator. Play to your strengths, and be aware of your fellow paladins." 

“Wait, fight?” Jou asked, annoyed with how his voice cracked with panic. “With _what?”_

But his teammates and summoned their bayards out of the weird inter-dimensional pocket things attached to their leg armour. Jou could hear the noise as their weapons shifted forms, watching as a hole in the ceiling opened and a featureless mannequin dropped to the ground. Wait, not a mannequin – a robot. 

There was no moment to assess or catch their breaths. The Gladiator wielded a polestaff, much like Yugi, and rushed at them. They scattered like roaches. There might have been some screaming; it might have been him. 

Kaiba crouched at a safe distance away, taking aim with his pistol and firing off a shot. And then he fell onto his ass jerking back from a retaliating attack. 

Jou tried hard to bite off his laugh. He wasn't very successful. And then of course he had to duck and roll away as the Gladiator swung the pole to smack him across the face. There was screaming. And swearing. A lot of it. Enough that Anzu flushed red and told him to watch his mouth. 

He dodged two more swings, yanking one shoulder out of the way, and then the other. But by then he almost thought like he was in a rhythm. When the Gladiator raised his arms to downswing the pole again, Jou crouched low and charged forward to tackle him. 

Big mistake. Metal did not give like cushy stomach did. His neck and shoulder jarred painfully at the impact – but he did succeed in making the Gladiator stumble back a few steps. 

And then of course, laser fire burned past his hair. “Kaiba!” 

“Wasn't me!” Kaiba growled back at him, from a completely different angle. 

“Joey, you ruined my shot!” Anzu complained loudly. “I could have had him!” 

“Sorry, I was too busy trying not to be whacked to death by a robot Gladiator!” he said. And then his breath left him as the pole in question slammed hard in his stomach, momentum swinging him and sending him flying across the room. 

He landed, thankfully, on something soft. But there was cursing beside his ear and he realised he'd been thrown into Rebecca. “Joey!” she said, and shoved him off as she wheezed to catch her breath. 

He tried to get to his feet, but his ankle tangled up in the loop of Rebecca's whip, and when she pulled it to aim, it tightened, and the tug had him falling on his ass. 

“Joey!” she shrieked. 

“Sorry!” he shouted back, and rolled away to untangle his foot. The electric charge of the whip hurt his fingers, even through the thick space-spandex gloves. 

He stood back and watched them all fight for a long moment, feeling useless and stupid. He didn't have a _weapon,_ so how was he supposed to do this? 

“Just going to stand there and do _nothing,_ Wheeler? You don't have to prove me right about being a waste of space, you know!” Kaiba shouted, rocking into the recoil of a blast. 

Kaiba’s words stung. He wasn't a waste of space, but he really didn't have proof otherwise at the moment. He just gritted his teeth and pulled a face at the back of Kaiba's stupid mullet. 

Rebecca’s whip got tangled up in the bow, and the two of them were distracted long enough for the Gladiator to throw them out of the metaphorical ring. Yugi cowered as the Gladiator – basically twice his height – came at him. He managed to deflect a few strikes with his own pole, but before long it was knocked from his hands and sent spinning across the room. The Gladiator picked him up and threw him into Kaiba, the two of them going down. 

“Uh-oh,” Jou said, as the bot turned its attention on him instead. 

_Okay, Jounouchi Katsuya. You can do this._ He rolled his shoulders and let himself fall into a long-familiar offensive stance. He bunched his hands into fists, thumbs tucked out of the way, made sure his wrist was straight, his forearm and hands perfectly aligned to avoid breaking his wrist. 

He shifted his weight onto his back leg, and as the Gladiator came at him, and threw his punch. Fuck, big mistake. Giant metal man. Jou bit into the tip of his tongue to choke off the scream as he felt his knuckles crack. Still, like that had ever stopped him in a fistfight. He brought his other fist around in a side-swing that struck out at the bot's neck-joint. 

But he was bringing fists to a gunfight. The Gladiator hit him twice, once in the stomach, then in the back when he doubled over. He crumpled on the ground face-first, feeling paralysed for a moment. 

“Enough!” a now-familiar voice snarled. “End duel!” 

He relaxed, even as Prince Atem stormed in looking like he was about to murder someone and enjoy their suffering. The Gladiator disappeared into a hole that opened up in the floor at its feet and Jou did his best to stand with sorta numb limbs. 

“The difficulty of that duel was suitable for that of an Altean child!” he growled, watching the team get to their feet. “You call yourself _warriors?”_

“No,” Yugi said, raising his chin defiantly. He stared down the prince, something unrelenting in his gaze. It was a side of him Jou had only gotten to see once or twice. Yugi was the kill-them-with-kindness kinda kid. “We're _not_ warriors. We were students! We had some basic combat training at the Garrison, but most of us have never seen a real fight before! We're doing our _best,_ but we need to start small and work our way up!” 

Jou rolled his shoulder, feeling the bones grind, to make sure it wasn't coming out of its socket. Again. He'd rub it down with that gel later tonight. And he had to get something for his busted knuckles too. 

Atem was almost _spitting_ with fury, but he froze when Mana touched his arm. 

“He's right, your highness. Our methods aren't working. We need to go easier on them.” 

“ _Easier?”_ the Prince sneered. 

She took his arm. “I'm taking his highness to get a talking to from someone he'll actually listen to. Why don't you all break for lunch and we'll look at training again when the two of us come back.” 

~+~ 

Whoever the Prince had spoken to, he seemed much more rational when he came back to find them. He asked for a moment with Yugi, and the two of them disappeared to talk strategies or something. 

After a surprisingly quick visit to the doctor’s office, Joey headed back to the common room. He stretched out on one of the long couches, trying to align his skeleton back into working order. He felt like one giant bruise; at the same time he was aware of the bruising up his shoulder, neck and face. 

“You don't look so good,” Kaiba said in an uncharacteristically soft voice. 

Jou didn't know what to say for a long moment. The softness... well, he wouldn't exactly have called it soft. Really, it was just an absence of the harsh tone that usually sounded their interactions. Still... it was startling. Kaiba wasn't _nice_ to him – and he wasn't nice to _Kaiba._ It just wasn't the way they worked. Jou strived to be as good as he possibly could, and threw challenges Kaiba's way to test himself. Kaiba refused to give him the time of day for longer than to cast a few insults in his direction. A couple times they had competed in the Garrison – probably because Kaiba got sick of him asking and agreed just so he could shut him up for a few days – Kaiba had been cruel and taunting in his victory. Jou pretended to be angrier than he really was about Kaiba putting him down – he really took the experience and turned it into motivation to do better. 

Kaiba would never call them rivals, Jou knew that. Kaiba called him – frequently – an annoyance. But Jou thought they were rivals; rivalry was good, and it pushed people to do better. Kaiba was half the reason he passed the Flying Intensive test in the simulator that more than half the class had failed. 

“Did you hear me?” 

Jou jolted out of his thoughts. “Huh, what? Sorry.” He raised a hand to rub the uninjured side of his face. “Knocked my head about a bit much, I think. I'm fine, dude—” 

“Don't call me dude—” 

“Just tackling a robot, really. Remind me not to do that again.” 

Kaiba gave a low, quiet hum of acknowledgement. Or... interest? Jou wasn't really sure. “And breaking your knuckles on its face too, I suppose,” he added quietly. 

Jou wriggled his hand about. Mana had held his hands into some ceramic animal-headed jar that lit up. When he'd pulled them out, his hands had been completely healed. “Totally fine. Don't need to worry about me jeopardizing the team!” he said with a grin. 

Kaiba scowled at him. “That wasn't what I... oh, never mind,” he commented, rolling his eyes irritably. “Yugi shouldn't have allowed you to participate in the fight without being properly equipped with a weapon. Not that having weapons really helped the rest of us...” 

He shrugged. “The old Paladins lost Black's bayard. Not much anyone can do about it.” 

Kaiba just frowned. “There's bound to be other weapons on this ship somewhere. They could have equipped you with something.” 

Jou shrugged. “I guess. I don't know. I'm better at hand-to-hand than anything else, really.” 

Kaiba hummed. “I'm sure we could work with that,” he said, rubbing a hand over his chin and getting that sort of intense look in his eyes he got before they went into an exam at the Garrison. 

“What, brass space knuckles?” He joked. He didn't know why Kaiba was sitting here, talking with him about his fighting, about equipping him with weapons. This wasn't _them._ They were always snarking and throwing insults, or Jou was bugging Kaiba who did his best to ignore him. 

Kaiba just hummed and tapped a finger on his lips. “Leave it with me. I'm going to talk some things over with Hawkins.” And then he stood up and headed out of the room without another word. 

That was... weird. 

~+~ 

“The Diadems of Thoth allow your minds to connect, much like they do during your time in the dragons,” Mana explained, holding a tray with five golden headbands lying on velvet. Each headband was inlaid with coloured stones for their dragons. Jou carefully took out the one with space-onyx and settled it around his forehead. It was too big, but after touching his skin it seemed to shrink so it could rest comfortably around his head. 

Just like Mana had explained, he felt his mind opening to his fellow paladins. There was an ache of loneliness, with no other mind to join with his own. 

But the ache disappeared as Yugi’s mind joined with his. The diadem he wore was more elaborate than any of the others, studded with purple-red garnets. Yugi’s mind was a familiar brush against his own, and he eased in to wait for the rest of the team. 

Anzu was next, her diadem delicate and feminine, studded with some sort of yellow stone – tourmaline, her brain supplied helpfully as she connected with them all. 

Then came Rebecca, and her headband was simple but geometrically perfect in design – lapis lazuli, Yugi's thought offered. The blue stone was revered by the Ancient Egyptians, his mind added, one of their best stones. He wondered if the Alteans thought the same. 

Kaiba joined them last. His headband was broad and masculine, studded with moonstones that were somehow shifting blue and white all at the same time. Something in Jou's chest settled, now the five of them were together – the wait was over. 

“Now focus,” Mana said. “Open your minds up to one another. There can be no barriers between you – you must all become one.” 

Just like Exodia, Jou thought. He could feel the tension amongst the group. No one wanted to be that person – the first one to expose themselves to the others. 

Jou gritted his teeth, tossed out a joke into the collective consciousness – he'd already exposed himself to them on the drill, right? He cracked open his headhole and left the metaphorical door open for them to all come in. 

His name was Jounouchi Katsuya. Jounouchi, like Commodore Jounouchi at the Garrison, his father. (There was no surprise from Kaiba's side). He had a sister, Shizuka, going blind in New York City from a congenital eye disease. He hadn't seen her in eight years, and she'd probably never _see_ him again. He grew up mostly alone in Vegas, the city of sin, and he had spent a lot of his early teens street fighting to feel alive. He'd failed the written pilot’s exams just a week ago – had it only been a week? – because his English literacy score was poor. (Kaiba _felt_ Jou bracing himself for an insult that didn't come.) 

Yugi opened himself next and Jou was eager to leave the confines of his own headhole to visit his best friend's. 

Yugi Mutou. He'd grown up with his Grandpa in California, who used to be a treasure hunter - archaeologist in Egypt, and his mother. His father was a pilot in active service most of his life, and was rarely around and not affectionate even when he was. Yugi loved games and had never played a game he couldn't win. He'd wanted to plot the stars from space, map the universe. He was terrified of the responsibility of being a leader, but it meant so much to him that they believed him worthy. Capable. He had a crush on Anzu since middle school but respected her choice enough he’d never press for anything more. 

Anzu was next. Mazaki Anzu or Anzu Mazaki. She was never sure which she preferred. She wanted to be a dancer, but she followed Yugi to the Garrison when her dancing teacher had quietly encouraged her to train for longer before pursuing dancing school. Jou felt a familiar anger in her, at being told by someone you trusted that you weren’t good enough to follow your dream. (Huh… he’d never really connected with Anzu on anything other than their friendship with Yugi.) But her anger was tempered with an almost nurturing kindness, while his own just festered. 

Rebecca Hawkins. She was a genius – her brain was vast and superpowered and flowed so quickly he struggled to keep up with the tide until he gave up and let it sweep him away. She loved her grandpa, who studied the past, and she wanted to discover the future. He studied ancient civilizations; she wanted to study alien ones. She wanted them to work together to learn about Altea, but she needed to keep him safe on earth. He was old, and his health wasn’t the best. There were no parents in her mind, only a small corner where she lived with the knowledge that they had abandoned her at a young age to live with her grandpa. 

They turned to Kaiba next, and Jou hit face-first into a mental wall. He recoiled, and felt the others do the same. He jolted backwards, and the diadem slipped off his sweat-slick forehead and jangled on the ground. 

Mana gave a sigh. “It was a good first effort. Let’s break for dinner and then you can get some rest.” 

“I’m not hungry,” Kaiba said. He shoved his headband off and threw it into the tray carelessly, turning on the heel of his boot and stalking out of the training deck. 

“I’m gonna grab a shower,” Jou said. He felt sick with the aftermath of the bonding exercise, his stomach twisted up in a turbulent writhing mass of eels. 

~+~ 

The living armour slid away from his skin, retreating back to its regular wristband form, and Jou kicked his underwear off to get in the shower. It was a big communal room, with five shower heads against the curved wall. They hadn’t had the need, yet, to all shower together. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, given they had two ladies on the team. 

He stood under the spray, letting the scalding hot water rain down on him from the spout on the roof that adjusted to his perfect height. He felt it soak his hair and wished it could soak into his skin and wash away the feeling deep in his chest. 

He'd let everyone in, exposed his entire self to the group, and in the end, it had been for nothing. Kaiba had blocked them out, and they couldn't even finish the bonding activity anyway. His body wracked with a shudder and he closed his eyes, ignoring the sick twist in his stomach that rose up to swallow him. 

He couldn't help but take it personally. Kaiba was a prickly bastard, sure, but he'd never outright fought with the others. He was the only one Kaiba had a real problem with, so who else would Kaiba be trying to keep out? 

An alarm blaring had him jolting out of his pity party. He stumbled out of the water and cringed as hot air blasted him from all sides to blow away the water in his skin. He felt for the wristband, feeling his armour grow over his body as he raced out the doors. 

The team was scrambling to change and leave the room as he came out. 

"Paladins, to your dragons!" Mana's voice yelled. There was real panic in her voice, and he knew that this wasn't just another drill. He jumped down the slide-chute to his hangar, trying to temper the spike in adrenaline with some cool collectivity. 

Black's mouth was already open when he reached him, and was flying out of the bay doors before he was even properly secured in the pilot's seat. He thumbed the trigger of the lever, matching it with a sort of mental nuzzle. "What's wrong, buddy?" He asked. 

He only got a vague sense of anxious anticipation. Whatever was coming, Black was worried about it. 

Jou felt, more than saw, the other dragons leaving their hangars and flying out of the atmosphere with him. "Anybody know what this is about?" He asked over the comms. He wouldn't be the first to reach out to the others. 

“Probably the huge Galra ship over there,” Kaiba's voice deadpanned, almost tinny over the speaker in his ear. 

Jou swallowed but didn't spit the response that formed on his tongue. “Yugi, instructions?” He prompted instead. 

“The ship looks smaller than the big one we fought before,” he replied. “Jou, Kaiba, I want you to take out the canons. Anzu, your job is to keep the fighters off our tails while Rebecca and I go after the fuel reserves.” 

“Roger,” Jou called in, even though he seethed with being expected to work with Kaiba. Bury it down, he told himself. This is about supporting the team. “All right, guys, I'm gonna draw their fire from the big canon, get ready to time the forcefield.” 

A picture appeared on his windshield. There was a pale human-like alien looking at him, a lazy smirk on bloodless lips. They had long white hair, a set of bat-like ears, and bloody red eyes. “Black Paladin,” they greeted, voice a rough, low growl. 

“Guys?” He asked uncertainly. 

“Don't bother, whelp. I've jammed your comms.” 

“Who the hell are you?” Jou growled, glaring at the video. “What do you want?” 

“I am Commander Bakura of the Galra Army,” the alien replied, looking at the pointed nails on his fingers as if he was bored by the conversation. “I've been authorised by His Imperial Majesty to offer you a deal.” 

“Me, not Exodia?” He asked warily. 

“A deal for the Black Paladin,” the commander replied, “though you hardly measure up to the title.” 

“Get down here and I'll kick your ass myself!” he snarled. 

“Well, you certainly have the same fire as Hermos did.” Commander Bakura watched him with indifference. “You will hand yourself and the Black Dragon over to Emperor Zorkon, and in exchange he will allow the rest of your pitiful band of humans to return to Earth unharmed with a thousand-year amnesty for your solar system.” 

Jou hated that he paused to consider it. He would never have called himself self-sacrificing, though in the past he'd been the person to put himself in between a fist or two aimed at someone smaller and weaker. Handing himself over to an insane emperor who cut off the last black paladin's arm just because he'd replaced him? That was nuts. 

But he did consider it. 

This wasn't their space war. They didn't have to be involved. What was he in the face of their whole planet? They'd have a thousand years free from the war, if anyone would _believe_ what had happened. That would be long enough to build up defences strong enough to fight back. 

He could feel Black writhing with fury in his brain as he considered it. Zorkon would keep his word, Black knew him well enough for that, but he would _hurt_ Jou. It wouldn't be a quick, merciful death once he handed himself over, not by any stretch of the imagination. He would be made to _suffer,_ like Hermos before him, simply because he'd become the latest Black Paladin. 

He still might have considered it, but then he felt something else, buried deep where Black didn't want him to feel it. Black was scared. How could a sentient robot be _scared?_ But Black knew what would become of him if he was given back to Emperor Zorkon. The atrocities he'd be forced to commit, the cruelty that would be his fault if he was piloted by the emperor. 

That bolstered his refusal, and Jou leaned close to the video footage. “No way in hell.” 

Commander Bakura looked irritated. He recognised that look – he'd gotten it from plenty of adults in his life. The look said plainly and clearly: _now I have to do so much more work because of your stupidity_. 

“I am only authorized to offer this deal once, Black Paladin,” he replied curtly. “If you don't accept it now, his Imperial Majesty will show no mercy.” 

Jou hesitated, but Black shoved him. _Don't be a coward,_ the dragon seemed to say. _Be brave._ So Jou lifted one hand off the steering lever and folded all but one of his fingers down. 

The commander looked at the gesture with a bored eye. “I'm going to assume that is not a gesture of acquiescence.” He sighed irritably. “Very well. On your own head, be it.” 

The video disappeared and the moment afterward, the shouts of his team-mates crackled to life in the speaker beside his ear. “Jou get out of the way!” 

“What the _hell_ is wrong with you?” came Kaiba's growl. 

“My comms were jam—” And then everything was unimaginable pain, then darkness.


	3. Exodia Assemble

Jou woke up somewhere dark and small. He was stood upright, at least, so he wasn’t buried alive. The air was fresh and cool, but too clinical. It tasted filtered, with just too much oxygen. Unnatural, but not bad, like the oxygen masks from the crash simulators. 

But he wasn’t at the Garrison, and this wasn’t a simulator. 

He felt forward with his hands, expecting a smooth metal surface. Metal, yes, but it wasn’t smooth. There were furrows and dips like the inside of a mask. If he bent his hands up to feel the space in front of his face, he could feel the dip of a nose, the curve of lips, little mounds that felt like glass where eyes were supposed to be. 

He shifted to feel himself, and felt bandages wrapped around his body. For the first time in what felt like years, his repeatedly-dislocated shoulder didn’t ache. 

He heard what sounded like Yugi’s voice outside and couldn’t fight down the urge to prank him. He put on his best spooky voice and projected as best as he could: “Who dares disturb my slumber?” 

The door – lid? – of the sarcophagus he was inside opened, and he grinned at his best friend. “Now _I’m_ the space mummy.” 

Yugi gave a strained sort of laugh and then tugged him forward, wrapping him in a tight grip around his waist. He awkwardly patted his friend’s head. 

“Relax, Yug, I’m okay.” He stretched a little. “Starving, though.” 

While Yugi ran to tell the others, he put his armband on and unwrapped the bandages, sliding the living armour back over his body. Then he met them at the dining room and was immediately crowded by Rebecca and Anzu. 

“Guys. Gimme some breathing room,” he groaned. “And the biggest bowl we have.” Even if it was the sticky green goo that served as ‘food’ – what had happened to Kaiba’s Earth-rations? He was starving and anything to fill his belly would do. 

Jou got his food and sat down in the dining area. The whole team was there \- all of the paladins, Mana, Prince Atem and… a tall, dark-haired stranger? Everyone seemed used to him, but he was pretty sure he’d never seen this guy before in his life. 

“You were hit full-force with the ion cannon,” Mana was explaining. “Black took most of the damage, but you couldn’t escape unscathed at point-black like that.” 

“We fixed him up, though!” Rebecca explained quickly. “Me and Kaiba. Black’s good as new, and we strengthened the outer armour with a magnetic field to—” 

“Thanks, guys,” he interrupted, brain too foggy to follow the sort of explanation that would go along with it. “How long was I out?” 

Yugi looked uncomfortable. “You know, time in space is kinda hard to judge, and the closer you get to different celestial bodies, time itself passes at a different rate, so really—” 

“Yugi.” 

“Ten days or so.” It was Kaiba who answered. 

“One Movement. So, ten quintants,” Mana corrected with a smile. 

“A quintant is like a day,” Rebecca said. 

“That’s twenty vargas!” Mana added helpfully. 

“Vargas is, what, fifty doboshes?” 

“And a dobosh is fifty ticks,” Anzu said. 

“Metric time! It’s a lot neater,” Rebecca said with a smile. 

“How long is a tick though? The Earth days are measured by the rotation of the Earth.” 

“I have a ticker right here!” 

“Okay, I’ll put a timer on my watch. Ready? ...go!” 

“...I think ticks are a little longer.” 

“Well. As fun as this clock party is,” Jou interrupted quietly, in way over his head. “We haven’t run into any trouble, right?” 

Anzu, only half-interested in the time debate, shook her head. “Prince Atem moved the pyramid to orbit an ionic nebula. It interferes with the Galra scanners.” 

“Wait, the pyramid is a _ship?”_ He pointed with a spoon. “And who’s that guy?” 

Mana beamed. “This is the King’s former priest, Mahaad.” 

“Uh-huh... And where’d we find him?” Jou asked uncertainly. He didn’t remember the guy from before. 

“His consciousness was stored inside the ship,” Mana said. “I found him when I was testing the different systems! He’s a sentient hologram.” 

The tall, broad figure with a permanently serious expression bowed to him, and said nothing. 

“Not chatty, are you?” He asked. 

He only got a slight head shake in reply. 

“Now that you’re awake, we really have to get a move on,” Mana announced. “One of the Emperor’s generals issued a challenge.” 

“General Bakura?” He asked. 

There was a pause in the room, and everyone turned to look at him. “Where did you learn that name?” 

He took a deep breath, and told them what had happened in the moments before his attack. 

~+~ 

Jou stood on the training deck, rolling his shoulders – letting himself smile for a brief moment when his shoulder gave no ache in response – and warming up. “Let’s start with the warm-up Gladiator,” he called to the room. Mana had told him it was fully automated, and would respond to his voice commands, but he took him a moment to worry that it wouldn’t. 

A faceless mannequin, just like they’d fought together, dropped down from the hatch in the ceiling. Jou gripped the polestaff in his hand carefully, and watched the gladiator take a defensive stance. He did his best, hitting it in both arms with the pole, trying to give it a smooth movement like he’d seen Mahaad show Yugi earlier. 

It was nowhere near as smooth as the fumbling movements of the Gandora Paladin, and if the Gladiator was on an offensive level, he’d be knocked out of the ring already. As it was, he landed the hits and then had the Gladiator’s polestaff shoved into his chest and push him over onto his butt. 

He tossed the polestaff away with an annoyed huff. “Pause duel.” 

The gladiator froze mid-movement. 

Stupid polestaff. It seemed to be the preferred weapon of the ancient Alteans, and there wasn’t a variety of other options in the pyramid. 

“Not your weapon, hm?” 

He rolled his head to the side and saw Kaiba standing in the doorway. He’d taken to wearing the black bodysuit and boots from his living armour under a series of increasingly ridiculous-looking coats. 

“You don’t have to come make fun of me,” he said. “I don’t exactly have a magical weapon that fits to my fighting expertise.” 

“No, you don’t.” Kaiba stepped closer, and dropped a pair of gloves on his chest. “Try these.” 

“Huh?” He asked, picking them up. “Gloves come with the armour.” 

“It’s not exactly – what did you call them? – space bronze knuckles, but I ran through some schematics with Rebecca. They’re magnetized like we applied to the dragons’ armour. You should be able to punch without damage to your hands, and it’ll add some additional force to your hits.” 

“Dude, really?” 

“Don’t call me dude.” 

He tugged the gloves on and got to his feet. He went around with the Gladiator, and grinned. As promised, the gloves gave him an extra boost – he felt like a superhero as one hit sent the Gladiator flying across the room. 

“One more thing I threw in,” Kaiba said, nodding at the gloves. “Hold them up – palms spread like Iron Man.” 

Curious, he did so, and stared as he felt heat growing, spreading down his fingers and wrist to pool in the palm of his hand. With a slight flex of his hand a small burst of some kind of red ball of light exploded from his gloves. 

“Whoa,” Jou said, bringing his hand back to look at the gloves. They looked like seamless black leather, quite deceptive in face. “Seriously, Kaiba? This is amazing.” 

When he looked back, Kaiba was already walking away, coat flaring around his ankles. “Don’t mention it.” 

~+~ 

Now that he was armed, they could train properly. They worked on ground combat in duels against the gladiators, and on flying formations and ran psychic simulations with Exodia. They stayed at the nebula while they trained up, until General Bakura broadcast a message across the universe. 

“A final warning to the Paladins of Exodia. This is your final warning. At first varga tomorrow you will come to the planet Kul Elna and surrender yourself to His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Zorkon, or we will destroy the planets in your galaxy star-by-star for every hour you delay.” 

Atem switched off the message and turned to the gathered Paladins. There was a faint trembling in his hands, but he stood tall and looked down at them from his dais. “The time has come, brave Paladins. We must no longer hide from our enemies, but face them in combat. We will prove that Exodia is no legend to be brushed aside, but the unstoppable hero of the universe.” 

“Can we do this?” Anzu asked reluctantly. “Are we ready?” 

It was Atem who spoke. His voice was deep, steady. The voice of a future king. “You five paladins were brought here for a reason. Exodia was meant to be assembled by you and you alone. We must fight and keep fighting until we defeat Zarkon. It is our destiny. Exodia is the universe's only hope. _You_ are the universe's only hope.” The prince looked to each of them, meeting their eyes individually for a moment, before looking at them as a whole. “We are ready.” 

Jou grinned and held up his hand, clenching his fist and seeing, out of the corner of his eye, his gloves glow with the red light of his dragon. “Let’s go kick some Galra butt. Winner gets the universe!” 

~+~ 

They wormholed to the rim of the galaxy where Kul Elna was located, and Atem hid the pyramid-ship in the asteroid belt. There was no doubt that they’d be picked up on the censors coming in, but with the ship cloaked amongst the asteroids, its exact location within the belt would remain elusive. 

If they failed, if Exodia was defeated, the Prince would take the ship and escape. He, and Mana, and Mahaad, and Kaiba’s little brother would be safe. 

Jou really didn’t want to fail. 

He stepped out of his bedroom, dressed in the formal battle armour of the Black Paladin. Instead of the white star-trooper metal-plastic of their regular armour, his new uniform was as black as the metal of his dragon, worked with a scale-like texture. He tugged the black weapon-gloves over the deep wine-red bodysuit and went to stand with the others. 

Their own armour had changed to match their dragon’s shells. Anzu was steady and serious in buffed gold, her hair braided out of her face in a sort of coronet. Rebecca, standing taller than he’d ever seen her, was dressed in teal-coloured scales, without her glasses, and her long blonde hair tucked into the back of her green bodysuit. Kaiba was in pure white, the sapphire of his undersuit matching his eyes, expression stern and determined. And then there was Yugi. The Gandora Paladin, in purpled armour, looking more grown up than he ever had right to be at sixteen – his hair spiked up like a mane, as he hadn’t bothered to do since before finals. 

He gave them all a firm nod. “Let’s do this.” 

A sort of determined peace washed over them in the wake of Yugi’s words. The calm before the storm, Jou thought absently. 

He made sure he was the first to break the silence, pressing the black helmet down over his hair. “Last one to their dragon is a rotten egg!” And then he burst towards his hangar-chute, towards the outraged cries of ‘cheating’ from his team. It was the last light-hearted moment they’d probably have all day. There was only fifteen doboshes until first varga. 

He rubbed his hand across Black’s chin as he stepped up the dragon. “Let’s go get ‘em, boy.” 

The mouth opened onto the gangway and he stepped inside. He sunk into the pilot’s seat, and it moved him forward to the control levers. “A nice, steady flight, okay?” He reminded the corner of his mind where Black rested. “Fly in formation as much as we can. We can’t race ahead of the others. The Galra will probably fire at us as we approach, but if we need to scatter, we’ll wait for Yugi’s order.” 

A soft rumble of acknowledgement – and just a touch of familiar impatience – answered him. The dash lit up, and the two of them flew out of the hangar doors. 

He took his place beside Gandora, the five of them oddly quiet as they flew. This formation was basically second-nature to them all now, after all the drills they’d run. It was what they _couldn’t_ predict and train for that would test them. 

“Is that it?” Yugi asked as they approached the planet marked on their radar. 

“Affirmative, Gandora,” Rebecca answered, though there was something tight in her voice. 

Jou leaned forward, swiping away one of the sensors on the windshield to get a look at what they had seen. 

When he was nine, he’d done a model of the solar system for his science project. He’d carefully hand-painted every globe, going over and over them until he was happy with the colours. When he’d carried it into the science fair, someone had opened a door on him and the project had fallen on the floor. Most of the planets had shattered, but not Pluto. Pluto, in its dirty yellow-grey, hadn’t smashed completely. Instead a huge chunk of the top had snapped off and exposed the ugly brown-grey clay underneath. 

He could only think of that little broken model as they approached the planet. It was completely lifeless, pale as barren dirt – and a huge chunk was missing near its north pole, revealing a blackened core. 

He swallowed and fought down a wave of guilt – before he noticed it hadn’t come from him. 

Their screens lit up with an incoming hail. General Bakura sprawled lazily on a throne-like command chair, like from the old Star Trek shows. “Paladins of Exodia,” he greeted, something reserved hidden inside his fake-bored tone. “Welcome to Kul Elna.” 

“General Bakura,” Yugi greeted, his voice calm and steady. 

“Paladin Gandora,” the general replied. He swung his legs back over the armrest and sat normally. “You see before you my home planet, a world of peaceful existence three thousand years ago.” 

Jou did not like where this was going, especially as Black’s guilt kicked up a notch. 

“Doesn’t look like much,” Kaiba said, sounding as unimpressed as ever. 

General Bakura threw his head back and gave a sort of laugh that was terrifyingly unhinged, and lasted just a moment too long for comfort. He rolled his head back to face the camera and grinned at them. “This shallow husk? You have your precious Alteans to thank for that – and your dragons.” 

“What are you rambling on about?” Kaiba said impatiently. 

“Your dragons – they’re made of a very special ore. One created by plunging an entire planet’s ba into its molten core and extracting the alloy in its entirely.” 

Jou recoiled in disgust, but it was Yugi who replied. “The Alteans would never do that. Your side is the one who destroyed their entire civilization.” 

The general, infuriatingly enough, just yawned. “You’ll have to excuse me for having no pity for an Altean prince being among the last remaining of his species. No time.” 

Yugi just gave him a disgusted look. “You issued a challenge,” he said, instead of following up on that conversation. “Here we are.” 

“Here you are,” Bakura agreed. “I will meet you in battle on the surface.” The video disappeared and Jou took a deep breath. 

“This is _so_ a trap,” Anzu said. 

“Walk into the trap, or have our galaxy destroyed star by star,” Kaiba grumbled impatiently. “Trap or not, we still have to go. We just have to make sure we don’t get stuck.” 

There was a chorus of hums in agreement as they all nodded their heads. 

“All right,” Yugi said, his voice firm. “Land in formation. Black, don’t rush on ahead.” 

“Got it, Gandora.” 

The five of them pierced the atmosphere, as little as there was of it, landing on a crumbling patch of earth. What Jou had thought was rocks turned out to be colourless, crumbling buildings. 

A solitary figure stood amongst the buildings. “Guess we gotta go out there,” Jou mumbled unhappily. 

“According to the scans, the atmosphere isn’t breathable,” Rebecca said. “The radar doesn’t show any other life forms which... is really just suspicious.” 

“Helmets on then, team,” Yugi commanded. “Shields up as soon as you’ve left your dragons. If someone is cloaked, we don’t want to risk them sneaking in and getting our dragons.” 

“Affirmative. Weapons?” Kaiba asked, to the sounds of getting out of the pilot seat. 

“Bayards out, but don’t form your weapons yet. Save your energy as much as you can, and be ready to fight or run back to the dragons at a moment’s notice.” 

There were no more questions. Jou took a deep breath and stood up, making sure his gloves were tucked properly over his fingers. “All right, Black. You know to guard, and run as soon as you run into trouble.” 

A grumble answered him. 

He gave a slight smile. “Okay. _If_ you can rescue me, do that first. But if you can’t, then you gotta run away and forget about me. We can’t let Zorkon get his hands on you, hm?” 

A reluctant grumble of agreement. He patted Black’s jaw as he stepped out onto the planet, the glass of his helmet sinking down to seal off his air. He joined the others next to Yugi at the mouth of Gandora, listening to Black put up his shield as he cleared the radius. 

As a group, they walked towards the figure. It was General Bakura, dressed in a long black coat – similar to the kind Kaiba had taken to wearing around the pyramid. He was much taller than Jou had thought in the video. He stood at least half a torso, shoulders and head taller than even Kaiba. 

“Welcome to Kul Elna,” the General greeted. “So pleased you could join us.” 

“What do you want?” Jou demanded. “Is it a fight? ‘cause I’ll kick your ass!” 

Yugi shot him a look that told him to shut up. He closed his mouth and clenched his jaw tightly, glaring at the general. “We’ve come to accept your challenge, General Bakura.” 

“Oh. Right. The challenge.” He looked bored. “I already forgot what it was supposed to be. I’m just supposed to waste your time until His Imperial Majesty gets here.” 

“Figures,” Jou spat. 

“Black Paladins are always so impatient,” the general said, talking to Yugi with a sort of smile like they were old friends. “But at least he listens to you, hey, Gandora?” 

“Can we skip the small-talk?” Kaiba barked. 

General Bakura turned to look at him, raising a single eyebrow. “You’re much more impatient than the previous Kisara Paladin,” he mused. He paused, and then added: “though much more chatty.” And then he giggled to himself, sharp and hysterical, like he’d just told a hilarious joke. He fell abruptly silent, then turned on his heel to head towards the houses. “Come then. If you don’t want small talk, then let me give you a history lesson.” 

Jou groaned. “ _Seriously_?” He muttered. 

“Quite. Don’t complain, you’ll enjoy it. I’m going to tell you all about how Exodia came to be, and what became of the first paladins.” 

... 

Four thousand years ago, a fissure had formed in a bright corner of the galaxy where Altea and Kul Elna and Galra existed in harmony and plenty, a deep fissure in time and space opened up, and out spilled a dark energy. The Alteans called it Sheut. The Galra, or more specifically, their King Zorkon, called it _power_. 

They turned to ancient prophecies and myths to find answers – and meanwhile the sheut started spreading, infecting the stars nearby, and swallowing them into itself, spreading like spilled oil into an ocean. 

The alliance between Galra and Altea’s star systems met to discuss the problem. The Alteans had an old alchemy, wherein great beasts could be created. They would defeat the corrupted creatures and find a way to stop the spread of the sheut – though exactly _how_ they weren’t in agreement. Galra wanted to contain the energy so it could be studied, and see how it could be used to benefit all people. The Alteans wanted it destroyed, so it could not harm any others. They agreed to discuss the matter when it came time to act. 

So it was decided. They would follow the ancient alchemy and create their warriors. The weapons could only be formed through the merging of a planet and her people’s ba. Five planets were selected at ‘ _random_ ’ – from a list of what Altea deemed the more _‘primitive’_ societies. Kul Elna, a local hub for space pirates and other assorted criminals, was among one of the entirely random selections. 

In the dead of the night, in the long thirty-hour cycle when their star was across the system, the Alteans had come, led by Prince Akhenaden. They gathered every resident and took them to the pole – for a refugee ship, they were told. They were lied to. 

I had been a child then, by the standards of my species’ longevity. Only a hundred years old. Still less than half-grown, making it easy to hide amongst the clay-hewn buildings of the village. 

An ion blast had split the planet at its pole, and Akhenaden had thrown their entire species in, one-by-one until all that was left was a single prepubescent boy with the memory of horror living in his eyes. Our planet had never been abundant with fertility, part of the reason we had turned to piracy. As the Alteans chanted ancient spells of alchemy and power, the planet died. The little of their sparse, dry vegetation had wilted before my very eyes. The clay-rich earth crumbling to dry dust and brittle stone, all water sinking deep into the earth. No heat, no ice, nothing. Just death. 

The core transformed into a magic, forbidden ore. That ore was taken away and would become Millennia. 

Zorkon would find the last of the Kul Elna people later – a child spitting with rage, haunted by horror, made of hunger and death. He’d steal him away, to the Galra planet where they were secretly studying the sheut. 

Four other planets. Five ores to become five superweapons. The dragons made themselves, or so the legends said, and chose their heroes – the Paladins of Exodia. 

Millennia, who chose Malik of Planet Ishtar. 

Illustria, who chose Akhnamkanon, the King of Altea. 

Kisara, who chose Critias of Planet Atlantis. 

Gandora, who chose Timaeus, also of Planet DOMA-4. 

And finally, Black, who chose for his paladin King Zorkon of the Galra.” 

... 

“No!” Yugi said, recoiling. Jou could hear the others around him, resisting the news, denying it. 

“Prince Atem already informed us about the first paladins. The first paladin of Black was Hermos,” Kaiba cut in, his voice cool with refusal. 

General Bakura just pointed lazily at Jou, who was silent and still amidst their anger. “Why don’t you ask your fellow warrior?” 

Jou could feel their eyes turning on him. He’d known it from the very beginning; he’d almost forgotten that the others didn’t. That this was big, horrifying news to them. That the person they were at war against had once been one of them. 

“Jou...?” Yugi prompted. 

He looked into the eyes of his team, each of their gazes begging him to deny it. “It’s true,” he said quietly. “Black showed me. Zorkon was his first paladin, until he became too corrupted by the sheut to pilot him anymore. Then he chose Hermos – and Zorkon cut his arm off for daring to usurp him, before blowing up his home planet.” 

“His Imperial Majesty is very possessive of his belongings,” General Bakura said lazily. 

“Not _his_ ,” Jou spat. “Black chose again thousands of years ago.” 

“Maybe.” Bakura picked the dirt out from under his nails. “You’ll see that for yourself in time.” He stretched, like a cat, spine bending in ways that shouldn’t be possible. “Shall I continue the history? 

... 

First, Exodia fought the corrupted beings, tainted by the spreading sheut. As word of their strength and prowess spread, they were called across the galaxy and asked to save the dying and needy. It gave the sheut time to spread, to infect, for more to fall under its control. 

Galra came under its power. King Zorkon beheld his people and did not see corruption; he saw transcendence. He gave himself over to the sheut, gained its power and control over it. He fought with Akhnamkanon and the rest of the galaxy, and demanded they cease the efforts to eliminate the sheut, to grant him the jurisdiction and the authority over its cultivation and propagation. When they refused, he demanded their surrender. 

The other paladins rejected Zorkon from their connection, and Akhnamkanon fled with the black dragon and the pyramid ship. Hermos succeeded as the Black Paladin, but instead of the spreading, corrupted victims of the sheut, they were at war against one of the most powerful peoples of the universe. 

Zorkon hadn’t hesitated to make his fury known. Planet Orichalcos had been destroyed, and the second black paladin maimed. Zorkon spread his dominion across the galaxy, corrupting planets with the sheut and starving them of ka until only lifeless husks of death remained. 

Exodia fought against him, foiling his attacks sometimes or rescuing who they could when they failed. And then Malik, the Millennia Paladin, was captured and executed in a grand public spectacle. 

Akhnamkanon knew he couldn’t risk letting the universe’s greatest weapon into Emperor Zorkon’s hands. One dragon already captured, he sent the others to the furthest corners of the known universe, sealed Gandora inside their pyramid and grounded himself on a hidden planet. Then he went to face Zorkon in battle alone. It was assumed his son had been hidden on Altea, for his own safety. Before he let Akhnamkanon die, Emperor Zorkon forced the fallen king to watch his star system be destroyed. 

With his last enemy defeated, Zorkon – made immortal by the sheut even beyond his species’ long lifespan – began his domination of the galaxy. When that was complete, his ambition and desire to share the bounty of the sheut were not fulfilled. He spanned outward, in every direction, invading and colonizing for the most part, and finding the strongest, most populated planets to become one with the glorious darkness. He didn’t have enough of the Alteans’ warping technology to power his entire army, so his progress was hindered by their fastest space travel. Yet three thousand years granted him control over half the known universe.” 

But Jou knew his threat against the Milky Way was real. Zorkon would take the dark core, the source of the sheut, and personally see to its destruction. 

... 

“Really,” General Bakura said. “It’s in your best interest to surrender your dragons to His Imperial Majesty. He does not wish harm on the most of you – surrender your dragons, the Alteans and the Black Paladin, and the rest of you will be allowed to return home. Your species have pitiably small lifespans. Your lives will be gone a hundred times over before the Galra reach your planet.” 

Yugi’s chin raised defiantly. “We will not surrender,” he announced boldly. 

Jou nodded firmly, and could almost feel the others nodding in agreement around him. 

“We will face your emperor, and we will destroy him, and take down the sheut for good.” 

General Bakura threw his head back and gave the hysterical, unhinged laugh that had become familiar. Once he finished, going a few beats too long, he wiped away a tear of sticky, black ichor. “Very well. His Imperial Majesty has reached the star system. Go back to your dragons; this will be a fun fight to watch.” 

~+~ 

They flew above the starved planet. None of them spoke. But Jou could feel them through the link, reeling from what General Bakura had told them: shock, and denial, and little resentment in his direction. He should’ve told them about Zorkon being the first Black Paladin. Whatever excuses he’d thought he had were nothing. But... really, Prince Atem and Mana should have been open with them about it. They’d only ever mentioned Hermos. 

Yugi’s fingers reached forward and pressed a button on his dash to connect to the pyramid’s comms. 

The prince appeared on-screen, Mana beside him, Mahaad in the background. A confused frown furrowed between the prince’s eyebrows. “Paladins? Why have you called us?” 

“We spoke to General Bakura,” Yugi responded, his voice calm and level. “He was upfront about being a distraction until Emperor Zorkon himself could arrive.” 

“Zorkon is coming _here?”_ Mana asked, her voice cracking up with panic. “We have to get the pyramid away.” 

“Yeah,” he answered. “A good idea. This was probably a trap... our dragons are loaded with a warp back to the pyramid, right?” 

Mana bit her lip. “Black’s already used his emergency warp,” she replied. “But the rest of you will be fine.” 

Yugi nodded. “Affirmative.” Jou could feel his eyes meet Atem’s, unrelenting. “We’re going to fight this battle for you, but when we get back, you’re going to tell us _everything.”_

Prince Atem’s jaw clenched, but he nodded. “As you wish. Good luck, Paladins. May the stars shine upon you.” 

Yugi turned off the video. “Alright team. If I call the order to scatter, no questions asked. Retreat manoeuvre kuriboh.” 

“Yugi,” Jou said quietly. 

“No questions asked.” 

He clenched his jaw and closed himself off from their connection to give himself a moment to calm down. 

Retreat manoeuvre kuriboh pinpointed directions for them all to travel. Equal distance from one another, a shattered retreat that – in theory – meant the enemy would be unable to track them. They could head after any one of them at random. 

But Zorkon wouldn’t go after any of one of them at random. Zorkon would go after _him,_ the Black Paladin. And he was the one who couldn’t get back to the pyramid. 

Yugi didn’t mean it that way, but Jou was decoy bait, to give the team long enough to scatter and regroup at the pyramid. 

He shoved the thought away, and then opened himself back up to the team. They welcomed him back, a small layer of anxiety disappearing at the five of them being together again. 

“Scanner is picking up a large blip on the outer rim,” Rebecca said, her voice unnaturally calm. “Larger than any of the other ships we’ve faced before.” 

“Reckon it’s Zorkon?” Jou asked, though they already knew the answer. 

“Could be a giant whale,” Anzu said, a faint smile in her voice. 

“Pinocchio save me!” Jou cried. Faint laughter followed his joke, and he cracked a smile. He’d broken the tension at least. That’s what he was good for. 

They sailed towards the ship, seriousness blanketing over them, and the mirth passed. 

“Yugi?” Anzu said quietly. 

At the unvoiced question, Yugi declared: “Form Exodia!” 

The five of them followed the now familiar pattern, until they were one. He felt Anzu and Rebecca propelling them forward, towards the ship they could now see looming on the edge of the system. 

“Rebecca?” 

“Running a search for the schematics now.” 

Jou clung to the steady calmness that was coming from the other arm. Kaiba was steadfast, the resolve Jou needed right then. They would survive because they had no other choice. Losing was not an option, not under any circumstances. They would be victorious, or they would successfully retreat and regroup. There was no other choice. 

Their screens flickered to life, and all they could see was a silhouetted figure and the glowing red eyes. “Paladins of Exodia.” 

Jou knew that voice. He felt a sharp slice of pain through his shoulder at the sound of it, one that was not his own. He let go of the lever to rub his bicep, remember it was still there. 

“Zorkon,” Yugi replied, his voice steady and unwavering as the strong, firm leader they needed him to be. “We are the Paladins of Exodia, and on behalf of the universe we demand you cease your tyranny immediately.” 

The hacking noise that responded to that must have been some kind of laugh. “You are impertinent. For mere children.” The glowing red narrowed, just slightly. “This is not your concern. You are far from home. You do not have to suffer this; I will absolve you for being entangled without knowing any better. Give the dragons to me and I will allow you to return home.” 

“Still no,” Yugi answered. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” 

There was an angry silence from the Emperor. He leaned forward into the light, his draconic-demonic face catching a blood red light. “Then perish.” 

The video cut off just before a laser fire blasted towards them. Too late to evade, Jou could feel Kaiba yanking their arm up just in time, a shield materialising in electric blue to absorb the blast. 

“Rebecca?” Yugi prompted. 

The schematics of the huge battle cruiser appeared on their screens. Jou swiped his aside impatiently, swinging his fist towards the incoming fighter jets. 

Kaiba grunted. “Where’s the fuel reserves?” 

“Can’t find them,” Rebecca answered, sounding distressed. 

Jou spared a thought to send them all some of the calm reassurance he’d grown from Kaiba’s own. _We’ll figure it out_ , he promised without words. 

“They must be stored internally,” Kaiba answered coolly. “There’ll be another weak point.” 

And if there wasn’t, they’d go in and trigger an explosion manually – the plan slipped between all of them, accepted without need for discussion. They’d trained for this. They’d fought smaller vessels. They’d kicked ass in simulations and duels against gladiators. This was real, but they were prepared. 

“Incoming,” Yugi called, and the girls jetted them out of the line of fire. 

“Jounouchi,” Kaiba’s voice filtered into his ear, “I’m highlighting a prospective weak-point. Think you can hit it from here?” 

“We haven’t missed yet!” He jerked the controls, felt them moving until his hand was raised. The little diagram of the ship lit up along one of the side panels and he concentrated their fire on that section of the real ship. 

He didn’t think it did anything, but Rebecca and Kaiba seemed pleased, at least. Their thoughts seamlessly bounced off one another to figure out the next point, as Yugi led Jou and Anzu to punch and kick fighter pilots out of their way. 

As they came up with another target, something heavy sunk in Jou’s stomach. He felt Yugi pick at what it was until the thought bloomed on his lips before his brain: “Guys… where’s the shield?” 

“Huh?” Yugi asked. 

“Every other ship has had a barrier to keep us out. We had to time our way through it. This place isn’t much bigger than the pyramid, it’s not like they couldn’t have a shield around it.” 

They had always known they were headed into a trap, but as Yugi turned them to face the space beyond, they realised they’d sprung it. The shield was there, all right – but keeping them trapped inside. 

So much for retreat manoeuvre kuriboh. 

“Rebecca, find us a safe entry point onto the ship.” Yugi barked. “Kaiba. Jou. You’re going in.” 

~+~ 

Jou darted his eyes over the map again. Or, as best of a map as Rebecca and Kaiba’s collective brain could reverse-engineer with scans and heat maps of the ship. 

Through the windshield, he spotted Kisara tearing through a formation of fighter jets. They hung like debris in the zero-g of space. Well… not _like_ debris. They _were_ debris, weren’t they? 

“Don’t be nervous,” Kaiba’s voice filtered through the comms in his helmet. 

“I didn’t say I was!” he snapped back. 

He could almost _feel_ Kaiba’s eyeroll. “We’re going in, sneaking to the likely location of the shield generator, and getting out. If we can avoid being noticed—” 

_Like they could_ . 

_“If_ we can, then there is no issue. If we can’t avoid detection, the two of us will take care of any sentries we come across. I simply need you to watch my back; I’ll take care of the rest.” 

There was a compliment in there somewhere, but Jou didn’t have the space in his brain to work out exactly where. Black gave him a gentle purr of reassurance, and he let it push away any fear he had. 

They could do this. They _would_ do this. Nothing would stop them, because they _had_ to. To keep their planet safe, to protect their siblings. 

“What’s her name?” 

Jou jolted, darting a gaze to where Kisara was level beside him as they circled to the starboard of the huge battle cruiser. “Huh?” 

“Your sister.” 

“Oh. Serenity. Or… Shizuka. I call her Shizuka.” 

“Mokuba.” 

“Huh?” 

“My brother. I know none of you have really got an opportunity to get to know him yet. But his name’s Mokuba.” 

“Kaiba Mokuba,” he said, fitting the name to the brief glimpses of the small, dark-haired boy he’d seen around the pyramid. 

“I know you were angry with me,” Kaiba said, as they drew closer and closer to the highlighted section on their screen, “when I brought him here.” 

“It was kind of an assholish move,” Jou agreed. “We all have families, you know.” 

“I don’t. Not really.” There was something almost vulnerable in Kaiba’s voice. 

It was so _jarring,_ Jou took a moment to confirm that it was actually _Kaiba_ he was talking to. Captain Mullet. Mr Thinks-He’s-Better-Than-Everyone-Else. The top-scoring pilot of the Garrison and proud of it. 

“It’s just me and him. And a series of failed foster homes.” 

Jou swallowed. Kaiba wasn’t open. Kaiba had refused to let them into his mind while they tried to learn how to bond to form Exodia. “Why are you telling me this now?” 

“Because I need you to have my back, Wheeler. There’s no way I’m leaving him alone in space.” 

Kaiba was trusting him. Trusting him with the knowledge, and trusting him to use it to protect him. So he could make sure Kaiba got back to the pyramid safe and sound. 

Jou gave a nod, and he knew Kaiba could feel his resolve. No other words were needed. 

~+~ 

“The heat-scanners aren’t detecting any life forms in the section of the ship you’re about to land in,” Rebecca said. “Not even the low temperature I assume is some kind of android guards they have in the rest of the ship. Likely it’s a cargo space.” 

“Got it,” Jou said, firing off a couple of quick blasts towards a group of fighter jets that were coming close. 

“This is the closest safe drop I can find to the prospective shield generator,” she continued. “Kaiba I’m sending you the heat-map, try and find a path avoiding any robots or soldiers.” 

“I’ll upload it to my helmet,” he agreed. 

“What the hell is _that?”_ Anzu’s voice cut through their conversation. Then, a moment. “Jou, to your left—!” 

He swerved in time. A sleek jet, not unlike the fighters, was firing at him. But it was nicer, fancier… clearly a single-pilot attack vessel. “Kaiba, keep going. Get us an entrance. I’ll take care of this guy.” 

He landed on the hull of the ship, wrenching the controls around so Black was standing on his hind legs. He swiped a clawed hand at the jet, but it smoothly avoided, landing a short way away from him on the metal of the hull. 

The glass top lifted and out jumped a figure that seemed to have walked directly out of his nightmares with a draconic sort of face, twisted and demonic, atop a hulking figure. Glowing red eyes pierced him through Black’s windshield. Swathed in darkness, no… in _sheut,_ Emperor Zorkon stared him down. 

“Is that…?” Yugi asked. 

Jou muted the comms as a shudder of pure terror pierced through him. He blocked the others out, until it was just him and Black and the first Paladin. 

Something pressed on his brain, like a helmet slowly tightening until it hurt. Then it felt like pressure popping, and he could feel the sickening black darkness in his head, stretching from the monster outside, through the corner of his mind belonging to Black, and into him. 

An insidious voice whispered in his mind, sibilant and relentless. _You are weak, you are unworthy, and I will take my dragon back._

Well, he always good with acting without thinking. He yanked his foot around the pedal and swiped Black’s tail forward, knocking Zorkon a step back. 

“Black isn’t _yours!”_ he snarled. “And he will never accept you again!” 

A cruel laughter. “Even Exodia can be bent to my will.” 

Rippling with the shadow energy, Zorkon materialised a familiar weapon in his hand: the same jagged blade he remembered from Hermos’s memory. In a burst of energy, he shot towards Jou, who rolled Black out of the way. 

Swinging the sword, a visible wave of darkness rippled out towards them. He tried to dodge, but felt it strike against Black’s tail. He could feel the explosion of pain and icy numbness almost as if it was his own. 

His comms crackled to life. “Joey, get out of there!” Yugi was yelling, his voice frantic. 

He slammed his hand down to mute it again, just as Black leapt away from another shadow, sailing over Zorkon and twisting into the landing. Claws scraped against the metal of the hull in a cringe-worthy noise, twisting them so they were facing their enemy again. 

“Exodia is only as good as their Paladins,” Zorkon hissed. “They must be suffering under the hands of such amateurs.” 

Jou squeezed the trigger under his fingers, firing a laser blast towards the emperor. Zorkon easily side-stepped it, but it gave Jou a chance to line up another attack. 

It never landed. A huge wave of darkness struck Black’s side, and they flew backwards, landing heavily and scraping along the hull. Jou pulled and pushed at the controls, but the whole dash was dark and lifeless. 

“It’s okay. You rest up,” he told the dragon, patting the unresponsive dash. He got to his feet and felt for the lever that manually opened the gangway. The helmet visor slid down to cover his mouth, keeping him breathing, and the pressure of the cabin shifted to account for the lack of atmosphere outside. 

He stepped out, and was suddenly painfully aware how _small_ he was compared to the approaching form of Emperor Zorkon. Hermos hadn’t been that much taller than him, which meant that Zorkon had _grown_ in the millennia he’d been left to his own devices. 

Jou flexed his fingers, felt his gloves powering up, and shot two quick blasts towards either of Zorkon’s hands. 

The emperor must not have been expecting an offensive move. That was the only explanation Jou had for why the blasts landed, and the Black bayard clattered away across the hull of the battle cruiser. 

The emperor laughed. “You think you can challenge _me?_ You pathetic child!” 

In answer, Jou hunkered down and ran at him, swinging a fist towards the guy’s kneecaps. Zorkon easily dodged and Jou followed through with the momentum, slowing to a stop a few yards away. He turned, feeling the tread of his boots squeak with resistance to stop him falling on his face. 

Two more quick blasts of the magnetic energy from his gloves that caused a grunt of annoyance from the emperor, and then he prepared for another attack. 

It never landed. As soon as he got close, Zorkon lifted him up with one hand and tossed him away as if he was a ragdoll. He landed with a painful bang on the hull and skidded, coming to a stop at the porthole. His arms were pinned under his body, and he freed them while Zorkon slowly walked across the metal towards him. 

He raised his hands, trying to get whatever defence he could from the inevitable deathblow that was coming. 

It never came. There was a huge boom as something landed, crouching over him, and something crackling and bright burst forward. It knocked Zorkon back, lifting him away from the gravity of the cruiser, and sent the emperor careening out towards the debris of broken fighter jets. 

He arched his head back and saw the underside of Kisara looming above him. He gave a laugh, relieved and disbelieving, and dropped his head back down onto the porthole. 

Crackling with interference, a familiar insult he never thought he’d be thankful to hear growled into his ear from the comms. “You’re a reckless _idiot,_ Wheeler.” 

~+~ 

Gandora picked up Black, who was still…offline. Yugi ferried him out to a moon just inside the barrier, and after a brief shouting lecture for his recklessness, Jou climbed aboard Kisara and the two of them headed to their entry point. 

Kaiba wasn’t talking to him, but that was fine. He’d probably jeopardized their safety facing down the emperor mano-a-mano like that. Once they landed, Kisara’s claws tore through the hull and a few crates were sucked out before the internal atmosphere stabilized. Kaiba pushed her snout into the hole and then lowered the gangway. 

Lights danced across the display of Kaiba’s helmet as they climbed down into the storage bay inside. He made a simple ‘follow me’ gesture, and then snuck out of the bay doors. Jou followed close behind, staying as quiet as he could – his gloves powered up, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Kaiba’s pistol was in hand, ready to be used equally fast. 

He managed to get them to the shield generator – and it turned out Rebecca and Kaiba’s guess was right. If the diagrams on the screen could be believed, that’s what the big whirly bright thing was powering. 

He frowned at the text. “Hey, why do the dragons translate speech into English in our heads, but not writing?” He asked. 

There was a pause. “Shut up, Wheeler.” Which… basically meant that Kaiba had no idea either. 

He dragged a cord from his wrist guards and plugged it into the dash control. After a few moments, a floating screen and keyboard layered over the top of the control panel in the cool blue of the Altean tech. 

His fingers pressed on the holographic keyboard thing, a scowl forming as a familiar looking pop-up blocked his progress. 

“Need a password?” Jou guessed. 

Kaiba grunted in acknowledgement. His fingers flew across the screen for a few long minutes, while Jou looked for an easy ‘ _off_ ’ switch. “I can’t bypass the security protocols on the controls.” 

“Rebecca could.” 

“Rebecca isn’t here right now.” He continued to type, until the screen showed schematics. “We can manually turn off these safety switches, overload the system and blow the fuse,” he said. He touched the screen, highlighting the switches in question, then flicked it idly towards Jou’s helmet with an impatient gesture. 

Colours overlaid the view of the generator in front of him, much like the schematics did over ships on the dash of Black. “Whoa. I didn’t know these helmets could do that.” 

Kaiba ignored his comment. He pinged a few of the switches. “You get those. Remember to turn them up as high as they can go, not down. Got it?” 

Jou saluted him lazily and ran towards the first switch. 

Between the two of them it was quick work, and as the generator spun faster and faster, making an absolutely ear-splitting noise, Kaiba gestured for them to leave. 

Their comms crackled to life inside their helmets, heavy with interference. “Jou! Kaiba! Do you copy?” 

“Barely,” Jou replied, tapping his helmet. “You’re breaking up!” 

“Galra forces surrounded Kisara,” Yugi was explaining. “We took her to the moon with Black and we’re guarding them. Can you launch an escape pod or something?” 

Kaiba had gone to a wall panel, and it was helpfully displaying the emergency exit plan as alarm bells began to sound. “There’s one close by.” 

“Affirmative, Gandora.” 

“ETA for the escape pod in 2 doboshes,” Kaiba reported. “Radio silent.” 

“Well, that was easy!” Jou said, as he switched off his comms. 

He never should have said it. As soon as he did, a laser blast shot right past his head and fizzled out on the wall. He turned to see a whole squadron of robot-androids stomping down the hallway towards them. 

“I take it back!” he shouted, and broke into a run towards the emergency exit. 

They managed to get to the exit bay, and Jou slammed the button to shut the blast doors – or whatever they were actually called. But they moved slowly, and the androids were trying to force their way in. 

“Escape pod deploying in T-minus sixty,” a cool, robotic voice announced. 

Kaiba stood back, fired his pistol at the closing gap in the door, trying to push them back out. But it wasn’t going to work. Not in sixty seconds. 

_I need you to have my back_ , Kaiba had said. _I can’t leave him alone in space._

“Kaiba,” Jou growled, lighting up his gloves and trying to add their magnetic force to get the doors to the bay closed. “Get in the pod.” Sweat was running down his face, trickling the back of his neck to pool in the bodysuit around him. His hair was soaked, hanging in his eyes. He threw as much of his muscles into the push as he could, the gloves adding enough of a shove that the door closed another inch, crushing the head of an android in between. 

“Escape pod deploying in T-minus thirty,” the calm automatic voice said. 

“Wheeler get your ass into the pod!” Kaiba snarled, firing his pistol between the gap. “I can hold them off.” 

_Forgive me, Shizuka_ . He curled a slight smile over his lips, glad they weren’t in the dragons right now. Glad Kaiba couldn’t feel the emotions that were a chaotic mess beneath the surface of his look. 

He grabbed the sapphire-blue fabric of Kaiba’s bodysuit, feeling the heat in his gloves. He pulled the Kisara Paladin back from the door and hurled, watching him fly into the escape pod just as the doors closed. Kaiba’s outraged face, spitting with rage, appeared in the glass as Jou felt cold, metal hands grabbing at his armour. 

“Take care of Mokuba,” he said, his voice crackling over the comm. 

The fear and anger in Kaiba’s face was the last thing he saw before the room went black. 

~+~ 

It was like déjà vu. Jou wished it was déjà vu. 

Anzu had explained once, when she was learning French before the UN had decided the official galactic language would be English, that déjà vu literally meant ‘ _already seen_ ’. 

Yeah. He’d already seen that. Black had showed him what had happened to Hermos. 

Zorkon above him, the wicked form of the black bayard in his hand, gloating about his insolence in daring to become to Black Paladin. Raising the blade and knowing what was coming next. 

Black hadn’t let him relive the memory of Hermos losing his arm. That part hadn’t been déjà vu. 

He hadn’t taken the arm with the wristband, so the living armour had curled around so he didn’t have to _see_ the damage. Turns out space weapons that were primarily made of lasers instantly cauterized wounds. It hadn’t _hurt_ any less. But now it just itched so much it was almost a burn, like the worst poison ivy ever. 

He wanted to scratch his palm. He really did. 

Zorkon had looked at him, told him that they really should have taken his offer of clemency. Then he ordered the crew to set a course for the Milky Way and had Jou dragged off and tossed into a cell. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about Star Wars. How his life was directed by George Lucas, and he must be a significant character because he’d lost an arm. (Episodes 1-3 didn’t count. They never counted.) Maybe he’d get a cool robot arm. Or maybe the robot arm would be evil. Knowing his luck, it would be evil. 

His brain was caught in that loop when the door opened and submitted a pair of uniformed Galra soldiers. He leaned up on his one elbow and snarked: “Aren’t you a little short to be a Storm Trooper?” 

The visor lifted and Anzu gave him a look. “Really, Jou? Star Wars references? Right now?” 

“No, no. The line is ‘My name is Luke Skywalker and I’m here to rescue you!’” he groaned. He got to his feet, giving himself a moment to get his balance back in order. “This is a trap, you know.” 

“We know. But that doesn’t mean we were going to _leave_ you behind,” she said. She came over, slid one arm around his waist to support him and hurried out of the room. “Come on, Millennia is here.” 

“Where’s…?” 

“Prince Atem is flying him. We’re getting you out of here.” 

“What about the barrier…?” 

“Kaiba and Rebecca are taking care of it.” 

He felt useless. Prince Atem had become the Black Paladin, he was _right-handed_ before this. 

He heard Rebecca’s voice, tinny in Anzu’s helmet. “Barrier is down,” she declared. “The virus should hold for ten doboshes. We’ve gotta get out now.” 

“We’ll clear you a pathway.” That… that was Prince Atem. In _his_ dragon. Black had already replaced him. 

Fighting the sick jealousy away, he shouldered his weight off Anzu’s arms. “Come on then. Zorkon will be making the jump to warp any minute.” 

She nodded at him firmly and headed down the hall to where Millennia was sticking her face into the torn wall of the ship’s hull. He collapsed into the passenger bay of the golden dragon and let himself cross over into blissful unconsciousness. 

~*~ 

Emperor Zorkon stood in a dark room, surrounded by his five most trusted Generals. His red eyes glowed, and in the dim light anyone could see his displeasure. 

“The surviving Prince of Altea has proved himself an annoyance,” the Emperor said, shadowy energy swirling around his ankles like oil in a riverbed. 

He eyed them all, one by one, before settling his gaze on one alone. “General Pegasus. I trust you will take care of this.” 

A golden eye flashed in the light, and a slight smirk curled over blood-red lips. “I would be honoured, Your Imperial Majesty.” 

END SEASON ONE. 


End file.
